


No Way Out

by Malivrag



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Planet, Cardassians, Original Character(s), Prisoner of War, Romulans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malivrag/pseuds/Malivrag
Summary: A Cardassian engineer is captured and imprisoned in a strange prisoner of war camp - from which, seemingly, there is no means of escape. She may also not be alone...
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

Right up until the moment the Klingons had thrown her out into the mud, Efet had remained defiant, proud even, despite her loneliness and the creeping realization of just how _far_ from Cardassian territory they had taken her. It wasn't until she was on her hands and knees in the muck, her hair falling about her face in disorderly tangles, that she truly began to fear her fate.

The Klingons were awful, but she had expected nothing less after they'd seized her and her fellow engineering crew on the little outpost where they'd been assigned to maintain valuable mining equipment. And to think, she'd so looked forward to this assignment - a chance for Efet, a treasured only daughter, to step out of her family's overprotective bubble and do some valuable work on a frontier outpost. She had been too naive, she had never seriously considered that the war would end up on her doorstep.

The outpost was critically undermanned, the entire reason Efet, a fresh graduate, had been assigned there. The two guards, Sian and Makbar, had died in the initial assault. Her direct superior, Chief Engineer Beltas, had been led away in restraints and Efet had never seen her again. She could only presume the worst.

As for Efet, despite her protests that she was a civilian engineer, the Klingons ignored her demands to be repatriated to Cardassia Prime. Efet could only presume they were holding her for ransom. They had thrown her into a narrow, stinking little cell, and fed her a noxious soup for a few days on their journey to this planetoid somewhere - Efet presumed - deep into Klingon territory. She was miserable - no one to talk to, missing her home and parents, and feeling concerned at the unknown fate of Beltas. She had barely known the woman before the Klingon attack, but hoped she was unharmed, or that at least she had died with dignity. When they arrived at their destination, Efet was snatched from her cell and unceremoniously dumped in the mud and muck of this strange planetoid.

Raising herself to her knees with as much dignity as she could muster, Efet squinted her eyes under the glare of the fierce sun. Ahead of her she could see only dense greenery, swampy and seemingly endless. Making an effort to stand, she turned and addressed what she presumed was the head Klingon.

"Where have you taken me?" she tried in Standard.

Laughing at her, the Klingon sneered and said, "This is a prisoner of war camp, and you are a prisoner here!" He and his friends roared with laughter, mocking her predicament.

Efet felt weaker than ever after her unwelcome confinement on the Klingon ship, and panic was rapidly threatening to overtake her. However, she tried her hardest to maintain control. "Prisoner! And what have you charged me with? I am a civilian engineer and in no way part of the mil-"

"Silence!" bellowed the Klingon. "No one makes it out of the **ngech** , not even slimy little lizards." The word **ngech** , a Klingon word he seemed to use to mean something like 'valley' or 'hole', was bizarre to Efet. This verdant landscape was a prisoner of war camp? But where were the barracks? The guards? Indeed, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey seemed to have landed on the only flat, barren, maintained scrap of land in this vast wilderness. As her eyes adjusted to the bright light, Efet looked up, seeing that this wilderness was, in fact, some kind of valley, ringed on three sides by incredibly high, sheer, rock walls that rose so high, she had to tilt her head almost completely back to glimpse the tops of them. Far into the distance, on the fourth side of the valley, she could see what appeared to be plums of water vapor rising into the atmosphere.

The Klingons ignored her, which made Efet furious. She knew she was no threat to them - thus why they turned their backs on her - but they also ignored her pleas. She stumbled from the muck and made her way to a tree, which she found had no normal trunk, but instead thick stalks, perhaps thirty of them, each one twice as thick as her body. The stalks sprang from the muddy ground then wound round one another, rising up to form what, from a distance, appeared to be a tree trunk, topped by foliage. Efet clambered up onto the stalks, finding a perch out of the sticky muck. Without any supplies of any sort, and with only the clothes on her back, she sat down and watched as the Klingons spoke on their communicators. After some time, another trio of Klingons emerged from the thick brush - they wore different uniforms, green-and-grey in color and boots that seemed to be designed for this terrain. These Klingons, Efet presumed, were her guards. They must have a base somewhere, she thought, somewhere in this swampy green valley. She looked at their cruel faces and cringed.

The Klingon guards did look over at her, seemingly directed to do so by one of the warriors that had brought her here. They gave her a cursory glance, said something uncomplimentary about her species, character, and parentage, and ignored her as well. She watched as they unloaded what appeared to be boxes of supplies. Efet figured these must be her rations, and crept down from her perch and cautiously approached them.

"I am Efet Erem," she introduced herself as best she could. "I have been brought here as a prisoner on this Bird-of-Prey. I am a civilian engineer. When can I expect repatriation to Cardassia Prime?"

The trio of Klingon guards was no more welcoming that her other captors had been. "You are here, probably unto your death," one guard informed her. "There is no way out of the valley, and I suggest you do not try it. If we have some cause to find you, we will find you."

Efet began to shake from fear a little. "And my rations? Supplies? Barracks?"

These Klingons laughed at her as well. There were to be no rations, supplies, or barracks, they informed her. The valley would shelter and also kill her. It also seemed to do their duty of keeping her contained, Efet gathered. Not that there was anyway off this rock without a spaceship - and Efet did not know how to pilot a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, even if by some miracle she commandeered one. The guards were armed, which was to be expected with Klingons, and although they did not say it, Efet gathered there were far more dangerous prisoners loose in this valley than her.

"Honorable Klingons," muttered Efet, turning chastising eyes on them. "So honorable to let a civilian woman starve to death in this jungle. I could not lift a hand to one of you and you know it."

"Exposure will kill you long before starvation will," one of the Klingons quipped. Efet bowed her head and fought not to cry. She could not believe it was going to end like this - abandoned to a slow death in a jungle prison in Klingon space. They could have at least killed her quickly and painlessly.

One of the younger Klingon guards seemed to take pity on her. After the others entered the Bird-of-Prey, he hung behind for a few minutes, took a small sack from their supplies, and tossed it at Efet. Gratefully, she fell upon it, no longer caring if she seemed desperate or not. All she could hope was that her people ransomed her from these loathsome Klingons as quickly as possible, and she had to stay alive to be rescued. She tried to thank him, but the young Klingon shrugged her off with a low growl. She caught on - he did not wish to seem partial to her to his comrades.

Taking her new sack, Efet retreated to the trees, climbing about until she found a spot she could sit on. The tree bark was quite marvelous, she found - soft enough to be scratched by her nails, and it released a delicious scent when scratched. She propped herself up with her back to the tree and looked in her bag. There were food bars, only enough for the nine days of a Cardassian week. There was a length of twine, a single fire starter kit, and a small blanket. The sack itself was loosely woven, and Efet figured she could put it to use in some way.

She did not venture too far into the forest. She had little way of telling direction, as the dense foliage blocked her views of the sheer rock walls or the distant, lone opening to the valley. Efet did not want to go too far from that landing strip and lose all sense of where she was. There was no knife in her sack, so she cast about until she found some rocks nearby, digging through them to find something as flat and flinty as possible. She then took another rock and went to work, chipping and reshaping her chosen blade. It was slow work, but she had nothing else to do. She was fortunate for her Cardassian photographic memory - she had seen such techniques demonstrated once in a survivalist course. At last Efet had a working knife. She tore a strip from her sadly ruined clothing, and wrapped it around the handle, to make it easier to hold.

The young branches of these twisting trees were only as thick as her arm and still green and supple. She cut an armload of them with her knife. She found a spot in one of the trees where she felt she could construct a little shelter. Using all her strength, Efet wedged herself in the opening where the roots had began to grow together, put her feet on another root, and pushed until she had made an entrance she could climb through. She then laid the branches criss-cross to construct a sort of floor for herself (a nest would be more appropriate). After she was sure it would hold her weight, she brought in her sack and laid out her blanket. It was rather comfortable, and the roots twisting around her made her feel like she was sleeping inside a birdcage. She ate one of her food bars and placed the others in the sack, tying it up in her little birdcage to keep it out of the reach of animals.

She needed water. The jungle was so swampy Efet knew there must be a river somewhere nearby. There was no way to know if the water was corrupted or polluted - but she would die for certain without water, so she had to take the risk. To be sure she could find her way back, she took her knife and cut marks in the tree roots as she went, just at her eye-height. The mark was the Cardassian glyph for 'E', the initials of her first and last names, and distinctive enough that she'd never confuse the mark for natural wear-and-tear or animal scratches.

Efet found the river shortly. It was tremendously powerful, seemingly cutting deeply into the landcape, and very fast-running; far too dangerous to try to swim. She had never been a strong swimmer, anyway. She had to follow the bank a ways until she found some pools that had formed in rock outcroppings. She had no cup; she knelt to drink from the water, choosing the coolest, clearest pool. Little aquatic animals splashed about in some of the pools; she wondered if she could use her sack as a net to catch them. Her clothes were filthy, and Efet struggled with the decision to bathe in the pools. She needed to cleanse herself and wash the pitiful clothes on her back; but that meant going naked, and she hated to feel naked and exposed. _Well_ , she thought to herself, _if the Klingons had wanted to rape me, they had many opportunities already, so I suppose I'm safe from them_. Something niggled in the back of her mind, a fear that there could be other prisoners out there - some hostile to a lone Cardassian woman. Shivering, she decided she had to risk it. She selected the deepest pool, stripping off her clothes as quickly as possible and wading in, keeping her knife in hand. Bending her knees, Efet enjoyed the sensation of the water washing away the sweat and muck and filth. If this place had a sunning rock, she could almost have called herself content.

Her sensitive hearing caught the sound of something moving in the jungle. Whirling with fear, Efet splashed out of the water, clutching her knife. But a small, furry, six-legged creature skittered past her, and Efet felt foolish. _Look at me_ , Efet huffed, as she returned to the pool. _Jumping at every creak and crack. I was never a fighter anyway, what can I do if someone does attack me?_ She idly considered that she could at least fling herself into the rushing river and drown, rather than let some brute have his way with her. Shuddering at the thought, Efet finished her bathing and then set about trying to clean her clothes. Her trousers were of a dense material, and they would take hours to dry, especially here were no bright light penetrated. Her blouse and jacket were lighter, and after she washed them and laid them over a branch to dry, Efet formed a plan. The jacket went to her knees and zipped up; she'd put that on as soon as it was dry and bring her other clothes back to her birdcage. She brushed out her hair as best she could with her fingers, then tied it back with her same hairband.

Reeds grew alongside the pools, and Efet went at one with her knife, cutting herself a sort of walking stick. She sharpened one end, intending that in a fight she could at least wield it like a spear. Oh, how she wished she'd paid more attention to her cousin Daykor's fighting lessons! He had been an excellent fighter. If Daykor were here, no harm would come to her. Efet sniffed, suddenly feeling very sorry for herself. She felt small and far from home, and utterly alone. Her parents must be panicking, she knew. Efet was their only child, loved and coddled since birth. She felt sorry for them, and wished that she had some way to let them know she was still alive - even if she was in this wretched place. She dressed herself in her jacket, pausing now and then to wipe at her face, then gathered her damp clothes and prepared to head back. Her markings would do her little good once darkness fell, although Efet, like all Cardassians, had better night vision than most humanoid species.

Again, she heard a sound of something moving through the jungle - the rustling of leaves, the creak of vines and branches, the sound of a body, a body much bigger than hers, crashing through the undergrowth. Efet almost screamed. Her knife was in her jacket pocket and her spear in her hand. A wild animal was bad enough, but whatever made that sound was bigger than the little scampering furry things that lived by the river. She froze, listening, but the sound faded away. Whatever - or whoever - it was, it was moving away from her. Hurriedly, Efet retraced her steps up the riverbank, then followed her marks back to her little birdcage in the trees.

She draped her wet clothes on the outside of the roots, finding notches and bumps and buds where they could be hung. Every few minutes, Efet went still and listened for those sounds again. She was picking up only the distant roar of the river and the underfoot titters and scrambling feet of little native animals. She even heard the flapping of wings. It was growing dark. The canopy was too dense for her to see the stars; she considered using her fire kit but didn't want to give away her location. Instead, Efet climbed inside her birdcage and wrapped up in her small blanket. She wrapped the length of twine around the entrance to her cage of roots, creating a makeshift door. Her spear was within arm's reach, right outside her little home, and she placed her knife beneath the sack, which she decided to use as a pillow.

As night fell, Efet wondered where in the universe she was. She had never desired an extraordinary life - she wanted to serve her state and her family, do good work, perhaps marry and have children and live safely and in peace. Nothing in her plans involved being in a Klingon prisoner of war camp that was really a vast and dangerous valley.

 _What will become of me?_ she wondered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Efet is not alone.

The rustling of wings somewhere high above in the jungle canopy woke Efet shortly before dawn. She stirred, reflexively grabbed her knife, then drew a deep breath and went still. It seemed impossibly dark. Even her eyes, adapted for low light, could see nothing in the inky darkness. She listened to the fauna moving about, something six-legged crunching it's way through leaves on the forest floor, and something hunting, swooping here and there on leathery wings, before taking it's leave. She had looked yesterday for large tracks, while she walked to and from the river, but saw nothing. That did not altogether settle her mind, for Efet suspected an apex predator here might be arboreal. For the first time, she wished she'd gone into exo-biology rather than engineering.

Efet occupied herself till sunrise by thinking of ways to escape this valley. There was the mysterious, fourth, open side of this valley, but she knew something had to be wrong. Either the Klingons had a force field preventing escape, or something about it was impossibly dangerous. She had seen water vapor rising in the distance, and she wondered if this valley faced out to an inland sea. The three sheer rock faces were daunting in their size. Efet had never learned to rock climb, and anyway she had no equipment. And even if she scaled those towering rock walls, where would she go? If she had any working equipment, she could rig up a signalling device of some sort, get a message to Cardassian forces, but the only equipment here belonged to those Klingon guards. Efet entertained herself with fantasies of singlehandedly storming the Klingon base, disarming the guards, commandeering their communicators, and escaping this place, never to return. She, who had never been in combat in her life! She, who had barely passed her required self-defense courses!

She emerged from her cocoon, no closer to having a working plan to save herself. She devoured one of her food bars, stored her precious few belongings, then changed into her (thankfully, dry) clothes. Efet decided to explore the river, follow it down and see if it led to anything useful, to follow it up, to its source. It did not escape her that any other prisoners, if there were any, would likely be camped along the only fresh water source. With any luck, she would find other Cardassians. Although she'd seen no signs of any, Efet could not believe the Klingons bothered manning such a remote prison camp, only to hold a single Cardassian non-combative. There _had_ to be other prisoners, she was sure of it. Pocketing her knife, Efet brandished her walking spear and headed back down the path she'd forged the day before, to the river.

She found the same cool pools, and this time headed upriver, trying to find it's source. Efet found it incredible to imagine where this river even came from. Surely it didn't cascade down one of those sheer rock walls? It had to spring from some gash in this planetoid; with any luck, there were tunnels, tunnels that could lead her away from the Klingons. 

Following the river upstream was slow going. There was a slight but still noticeable incline. She crept her way across the twisting tree roots as best she could, avoiding the muck that tried to bog her down. Different sorts of foliage grew along the banks; dense vines weighed down under clusters of berries, giant fungi in brilliant colors, and immense flowers that held pools of water in their petals. Efet dearly wished to know which of them were edible. Her food would run out in a few days, and she wouldn't survive for long after that. If the Klingons would have allowed her access to even basic botanical information -- Efet sighed with frustration. _No_ , she told herself, _I am not starving to death out here! I am making it out of here alive, I vow it!_

A particularly thick wall of foliage blocked the next surprise from her view. Efet clambered through the mass of leaves and vines to find, before her astonished eyes, a great pool had formed beneath a waterfall. The river crashed its way along, but some of the water tumbled off to the side, creating a beautiful pool in a depression in the stone, a depression that must have taken millenia for the water to hollow out. The waterfall itself was not high -- perhaps six or seven meters -- but it was wide, and as Efet approached it, she saw that the pool was so clear that it was deceptive; it seemed at first glance to be shallow enough to be waded into, but when she tossed in a stone, she watched it fall and fall, far down to the sandy bottom. This pool, she estimated, must be more than 10 meters deep. She circled along the edge of the pool to find that a sort of grotto had been carved out behind the waterfall, perhaps worn away long ago, before seismic activity had changed the flowing of water. She carefully picked her way along the slippery rocks, ducking into the grotto and disappearing behind the veil of the waterfall. She slipped off her boots and dug her toes into the black (black!) sand. It was deliciously warm, supporting her assumption that this area was seismically active. The sandy area was not large, perhaps a couple meters wide and about 5 meters in length, dead-ending into rock, and the walls of the grotto were slick with moisture and almost shiny black, with some gleaming little stones to be seen embedded here and there. The crashing water drowned out all other sound.

Efet pondered moving from her little birdcage to this grotto. No one could find her here easily, and she would have access to plenty of fresh water. But the rushing water was very loud, and she did not like the feeling of being trapped, should someone find her little hidey hole, for only one side of the grotto opened out to the riverbank. 

It was the rushing water that betrayed her, for she could not hear the approach of the new visitor. 

Efet was still sitting in her little grotto, her toes buried in the black sand, when a dark figure passed in front of her, on the other side of the waterfall, and crashed into the pool.

She almost screamed. Embarrassingly, she was in such a rush to stand up that she actually toppled over backwards, landing on her bottom, and embarrassed herself further by scrambling in a ridiculous manner for her spear. It took her some moments to realize that the being who had dived into the pool had no idea that she was there. The waterfall had, again, concealed her.

Shaking from nerves, Efet crept around to the edge of the waterfall, spear at the ready, trying to get a good look. 

It was an _alien_.

At first, all she saw was a humanoid figure swimming through the pool. Then the alien surfaced, and she could clearly make out the back of a dark head of hair, broad shoulders, and skin of a pale hue. The alien dove, then surfaced again, pulling himself up onto the rocky edge of the pool. He was still a ways away, but Efet got a good look at his face. This was not a Klingon or a Cardassian. It was not even a human. For a moment, she thought he might be a Vulcan, when she spotted the pointy ears and arched brows, but then that head swiveled around and he looked right at her--

It was a _Romulan_!

Overcome with fear, Efet burst from her hiding spot. All she could think was that she'd been spotted. She still had her spear in hand, but she left her shoes behind in the grotto. In those moments, her most primitive instincts of self-preservation had taken over. She dove into the jungle, fighting her away through with mad purpose borne of terror. The Romulan had spotted her! He was sure to be hostile! She slipped in the mud, throwing herself forward desperately, her hands scrabbling for anything at all to hold onto, to pull herself forward and away -- there was a sound behind her. Fear once again overtook her, sending her into a near-frenzy. He was gaining on her! She crawled desperately into a tangle of roots, pressing her back to the tree and grasping her spear.

The Romulan was much faster than her. He came flying at her in a leap, his feet smashing into the twisted roots on either side of her, and with a single heave, he broke them both, shattering the base of the tree. Wood shards flew everywhere. The tree collapsed behind her, falling back into the other foliage. Now bereft of her little cage, Efet bravely thrust her spear at him -- the Romulan caught it and snapped it, flinging the two sad pieces in opposite directions. He was right on top of her, his hand digging into her jacket, and with no other option, she pulled out her knife.

The Romulan caught her hand and squeezed. Gasping in pain, Efet watched helplessly as he pried her fingers from the knife, which toppled uselessly to the forest floor. The Romulan put both hands on the collar of her jacket, pressing her against what was left of the base of the shattered tree. Efet wrapped her hands around his, pulling as hard as she could.

The Romulan shoved her back, releasing her, with a look on his face that almost resembled disdain. Panting, Efet lay prone over the tree's broken roots, shaking too hard with fear to even lift a hand in defense. He was much stronger than her, she realized. He could probably snap her neck with little trouble. He was naked, and she turned her face from him, ashamed. She had only seen Romulans on holos, and seeing one in the sunlight was bizarre and frightening -- his skin was pale, with green undertones, and the sharp features of his face were cruel. He was one of the type who had forehead ridges. Her hand ached from where he'd taken the knife from her -- it was a wonder her fingers weren't broken.

"Please," gasped out Efet. "Please, don't kill me."

"Kill you?" The Romulan spat out. "I don't even _know_ you. Why were you spying on me?" He grabbed her by her collar again, pressing in close, and his steely look nearly made her faint with fear.

"I-I wasn't!" Efet cried out, again trying to pry his hands away. 

"Ugh, stop doing that!" The Romulan seemed enraged as he, yet again, shoved her to the ground.

"Stop, what?" Efet rolled onto her back, drawing up her legs in an instinctive defensive posture.

"Stop -- _touching my hands_!" The Romulan sounded annoyed. This shocked Efet out of some of her fear. She was on her back in the mud, begging for her life, and this alien was annoyed?!

"Well, stop grabbing my neck!" Efet dared to say back.

The Romulan blew an irritated snort through his nose. He glared down at her for a moment, and Efet glared back up at him. At last he said, "Answer my question, snake! Why were you spying on me?"

 _Snake_! Now Efet was the annoyed one. Why did so many alien races have a slur for Cardassians that referred to some reptile or poisonous serpent? Yes, Cardassians had scales, but she had always hoped for some more compelling and creative slur. She supposed she should just be grateful this thickheaded Romulan didn't call her a 'spoonhead'. "I told you, I was not spying. I was merely enjoying myself in the hot sand of that grotto when you rudely interrupted me."

"So why did you run from me?" The Romulan looked a bit smug, lips pursed as though he'd found some flaw in his story that he was eager to pick apart.

"Why wouldn't I run from a hostile alien! A naked one, might I add, when I myself am a helpless female." 

This earned her another furious glare. "I was bathing myself in that pool, not on the prowl to assault some... helpless females. I have never and I would never!" His lip curled. "As though I'd ever sully my bloodline with a -- Cardassian!" He spat the word like that was all the proof he needed of why she was so far below him.

"Oh, you flatter yourself!" Efet sat up now, no longer caring about her imminent death or the mud and muck again ruining her clothes and hair. "A Cardassian woman would rather die than let a loathsome Romulan have his way with her. I am a prisoner here, as are you, I presume. Why would I bother spying on you? What could I hope to achieve? Unless my mission was to find the most violent, vicious, cruel Romulan in existence--"

"Enough!" He stomped away from her and then stomped back. It any other situation such a display would've been hilarious. He jabbed a finger at her, started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He began to stomp back the way he'd come, towards the river.

"Wait!" Efet clambered to her feet. She paused only to grab her knife from where it lay in the mud. "What are you doing?"

The Romulan shot her a look from over his shoulder. "I am still naked! And now I am muddy and all my clothes are back at that waterfall. You are obviously no threat--"

Efet rolled her eyes.

"--but don't dare bother me, Cardassian woman."

"My shoes are also back in that grotto." Efet walked after him. "I need to reclaim them."

He said nothing else, so Efet continued following after him. From behind, she noticed -- resolutely keeping her eyes above the small of his back -- that his hair was long, falling to his shoulders. Didn't Romulans keep their hair painstakingly trimmed and neat, if not shaved entirely? Efet wondered how long he'd been here, in this jungle prison. It seemed long enough for his hair to grow out of Romulan regulation length. Were there more of his kind here? Efet considered asking him, but she did not want to trigger another raging fight just yet.

They made it back to the pool, each determinedly ignoring the other. The Romulan climbed the side of the waterfall, where it seemed he'd stashed his clothes somewhere. He yanked them on with more force than was strictly necessary. Efet found her boots in the black sand of the grotto, right where she'd left them, but now her clothes and her self were both terribly muddy, again. She wanted to cry. She had always prided herself on her cleanliness and neatness, and here she was, miserable, cold, muddy, and utterly alone except for a nasty Romulan who hated her. She sniffed and rubbed at her nose.

"Where are you going?" The Romulan called down to her as she climbed along the rocks out of the grotto.

"You said not to bother you," Efet snapped at him. "Why should I bother you with my comings and goings? I'm just a snake, after all."

He vaulted down the rocks from the top of the waterfall with terrifying ease and grace. Efet, who had just delicately picked her way across the slick stones, was again reminded of how much stronger he was than her. She stood still and let him approach her. He was dressed now, but in some sort of uniform she didn't recognize. Just black trousers and a pointy-shouldered top, with those curious two-toed Romulan-style boots. She now wished she'd checked to see if he only had two toes on each foot. She'd been trying so hard not to look right at him, she'd squandered the opportunity.

"I can track you through this jungle with ease," the Romulan told her. "Make this easier for yourself, and confess your whereabouts."

Efet grimaced. "Is this how you speak to your own women?"

A strangle look flitted across his face, followed by a scowl. Drawing herself up straight, Efet stepped around him and went on her way.


	3. Chapter 3

Seven days passed in the jungle since that day she'd encountered the Romulan. She washed herself and her clothes, returned to her birdcage, and fashioned herself a new spear. For a day or two, she jumped at every rustling of leaves, but that passed soon enough. She saw no sign of him nor anyone else. A great loneliness fell upon her like a shadow. Her hope of a quick rescue ebbed and faded away to nothing. She still had no way of contacting her people and sometimes the quiet, natural sounds of the jungle -- the animals climbing about, the rushing waters of the river, even her own breathing -- seemed so loud it was deafening. She sang to herself for a day or two, then talked to herself, but stopped because she feared going mad. Her lowest moment came when she went to eat her last food bar. Efet bit into it, thought of the taste of the food her parents once prepared for her, lovingly, with their own hands, squeezed her eyes shut, and wept. She wept until she couldn't weep anymore. 

That night she awoke, feeling cold. Cardassians thrived in the heat, almost the only thing in this jungle that suited her. But the temperature had dropped rapidly at least ten degrees, shocking her from her sleep. Efet put on all her clothes and wrapped her blanket around her shoulders, wondering what was happening. Was it her imagination, or was everything... damp? She swiped a hand over one of the roots of her birdcage, and it came back wet. There was another sudden drop in temperature, and then the first sprinkles of rain. Annoyed, she climbed from her birdcage and cut down some of the wide fronds nearby, laying them atop the tangle of roots to provide a sort of roof. This worked for some time. Efet huddled in her little makeshift shelter, watching anxiously as the rain increased.

With a great rush of water, her fronds gave way, and Efet cried out as she was soaked. Rivulets of water had flooded the underbrush, and was encroaching on her birdcage. She grabbed the biggest frond and held it over her head, trying miserably to decide what to do. 

The rainstorm decided for her. A great rush of water came sweeping through her area, and Efet realized that the river must have overflown its banks. _Flakk_! she cursed inwardly. The water poured in, soaking her feet, then up to her knees. _I'll be swept away and drowned_ , thought Efet, as it became difficult to stand. She managed to grab the length of twine, intending to use it to climb up the tree trunk, but as she attempted to step out and clamber along the outside of her birdcage, the great rush of the water made her slip. She barely caught herself, clinging to a tree root with both hands, the twine (wrapped around a forearm) lashing uselessly in the water. She was now up to her chin, the current too powerful for her to swim against, and showing no signs of abating. _I'm going to die here_ , Efet realized. _My grip will weaken, and I'll be pulled under. Flakk! I can't believe this is happening!_ Her hands felt so cold, she could barely feel her fingers, and the rest of her body, submerged in the water, felt no better. She tried to lift her head and cry for help -- to whom? Who would hear her cries, much less come to her rescue? Efet couldn't say, but she cried out anyway, until she was gulping water in her mouth instead of air. 

She tried releasing one hand for a moment, intending to reach up and grab a higher section of the root, but the current yanked her arm back with such force that she lost her grip entirely. Efet tried to scream as she went under, but only swallowed more water. It was dark under the water, and she clenched her eyes shut as she was swept along, certain she would shortly be slammed into a tree and dashed to pieces. She could only hope she sustained a head injury that would kill her instantly.

Instead, something -- someone -- grabbed her by the shoulder, and her head surfaced. Sputtering and gagging, trying to scream, Efet was too confused to understand what was happening. She was dragged up, and someone snarled into her ear, "Hold onto my waist." Still uncomprehending, she flailed out her arm and caught hold of some part of a male body -- the hip, she realized dimly, as she could feel his hipbone. Her other arm came around to join it. Efet hung on for dear life.

Looking up, she at first could only see part of his chest and neck, but she knew immediately who it was. The Romulan she'd encountered seven days ago, hanging from one of the thick vines dangling from a treetop, with Efet clasped around his waist. She knew now why he had her hold onto him like this. He needed both hands to climb, one hand over the other, till their entire bodies emerged from the raging waters. Efet pressed her forehead to his lower chest, putting every last reserve of strength into holding on. If she fell into the waters, she doubted he could catch her again -- if he would even try. 

His body was surprisingly warm, and Efet felt like she was trying to absorb his warmth into her poor, wet, frozen body. They stopped their ascent, but Efet didn't dare open her eyes or look around to see why. She clung on and put her trust in him. The Romulan swung his legs until they were swinging to and fro, and then he stepped from the vine onto a thick tree branch, one hand digging in to hold on, and the other holding onto the back of Efet's shirt so she would not fall off.

She was too afraid to let go of him even after she felt her feet touch the tree branch. She was pressed between him and the trunk, her face still buried in the warmth of his chest, her eyes clenched shut. For a moment, Efet even wondered if she were dying, and this was all a hallucination. Then a hand touched the back of her head, catching a handful of her hair, and gently peeling her back until she was looking up at him.

"We're alive," the Romulan assured her, and Efet could only nod at him, wide-eyed. He released her hair, then reached to the side to grab her elbow -- didn't he have a thing about hands? Efet remembered that from their previous encounter -- and pulled her hands apart. Now disconnected from him, Efet tried to take a step away, only for her foot to slip on the slippery bark, and she would've plummeted right back into the water had the Romulan not grabbed her by the chest and pushed her against the trunk.

Her breaths came in little wheezes of terror. The Romulan frowned. "Calm down," he said, looking at the desperate grip she had on his forearm. "You have to calm down. We're alive. We're going to live."

"Y-you s-saved me," Efet said between chattering teeth. She wasn't sure if she was trembling from the cold or from terror -- probably both. 

"Yes, I did," admitted the Romulan. He seemed to regard her for a moment. Boldly, she looked right back at him. He had dark eyes, and the facial ridges she had noticed previously. His clothes stuck to his body. His hair was soaking wet, clinging to his head and neck, and she doubted many people had ever seen a Romulan in such disarray. They had always seemed so... prissy. So well-groomed and arrogant. Cardassians also appreciated refinement and elegance of person, but the Romulans with their severe haircuts and severe facial features just took it to another level.

He turned his face from her. "I can't believe I risked my life to save you," he said. "I don't even know you. You are useless for my mission -- worse than useless! Ugh! You have manifested some sort of weakness in me."

Efet drew a deep breath. "I don't know why you saved me either, but I am grateful," she told him. "Without you, I'd be dead by now." 

He was so still, it seemed he had not heard her, but then he said, "I don't know if I did you any favors. A quick death in this storm would perhaps be preferable to a lingering death in this place." The Romulan seemed to realize he still had a grip on her shirt, just above her chest, and slackened his grip. He did not quite let go -- in case she started to fall again -- but he seemed not to want to touch her more than was necessary.

She was so cold she had a mad wish to press closer to him, for more of that sweet body heat, but she had not quite lost her mind. Daring to release one of her own hands from his forearm, Efet brushed the wet tangle of her hair out of her face. "We've not been formally introduced," she said. "Please, allow me. My name is Efet Erem, and I am an engineer. I would like to know your name."

The Romulan was looking at her again, a sideways look that seemed to betray his trepidation. At last he said, "I am called Deleth." The 'L' in the middle of his name was one of those strange swallowed Romulan sounds.

"Deleth," she tried, watching him grimace at her pronunciation. "Are there more like you here?"

"No," he said, lowering his chin. "No, there are no more of my kind here. Not anymore."


	4. Chapter 4

Efet's eyelids fluttered, shut, and fluttered again. For a moment, she forgot where she was and could not understand why she was asleep in a strange sitting position, pressing up against some kind of warm barrier. Reluctantly, Efet lifted her head from the warm place it had settled, and cracked her eyes open. She sat straddling a thick tree branch, still high in the air, her feet dangling into space. To her back was the fragrant tree trunk; she had fallen asleep slumped against the warm figure of the Romulan -- Deleth -- who was also sitting on the tree branch with his back to her, one hand still clutching a vine, his head resting on a young branch jutting from the main trunk. Sunbeams danced through the treetops. Efet realized she must've been sleeping on him for at least a couple of hours, with her face nestled in the curve of his neck.

Deleth stirred as she did, shaking his head, then stretching his back. Efet was likewise slowly trying to move her body. Her legs felt numb, and her clothes were still damp from the torrential flood the night before. She realized for the first time that she still had the length of twine tied to her forearm. In all the excitement last night, she had forgotten about it entirely. Efet regarded the twine sadly. She had nothing but the clothes on her back and this twine now.

Deleth climbed to his feet, far more nimble than she, and balanced on the branch. He looked exhausted, and for the first time, Efet saw the youthfulness in his face. He might be chronologically older than her, as Romulans lived longer than Cardassians, but he was still young, not a battle-hardened soldier. Without a word to her, he swung off their branch and began his descent down the tree trunk.

"Hey!" cried Efet. "Where are you going? You can't leave me up here!"

"I very well can," Deleth called from his place on the tree trunk.

"You saved my life," Efet said, pulling her feet up onto the branch so she sat in a crouch. "Why do that if you intend to leave me up here to die?"

"Surely you can handle yourself." Deleth continued on his way.

"Wait!" Efet grew a little frantic. "I can't get myself down from here."

He did not reply.

Efet sighed in irritation. It seemed Deleth was, indeed, leaving her to rescue herself. She looked again at the twine, and got an idea. Untying it from her forearm, she tied a knot in one end and tried swinging it around the tree trunk. Her first couple of attempts were failures, but finally she swung it round and was able to catch the other end. Taking a deep breath, she wound the ends of the twine around her wrists, pressed her heels into the tree trunk, pushed herself out, and tried stepping down the tree. It was exceptionally difficult, as she had to tilt herself so far back and her wrists were supporting her body weight, but she managed to 'walk' herself down several feet.

"A clever idea, for an inferior being," Deleth said, peering up at her. "Are you sure you're strong enough to get all the way down?"

"No," Efet gritted out from between her teeth. "But I have to try." Her arms trembled with the strain. _I'm not dying here!_ she repeated her vow to herself.

Her strength began to fail her. Efet silently cursed to herself as she felt her arms weakening, knowing that the drop to the jungle floor was still too far -- even worse than a quick death from a broken neck, she could lay there in a paralyzed heap, lingering on to a much slower and more agonizing death, if she fell. She held on from sheer force of will now.

She heard Deleth moving from below, and in a moment he had climbed up beside her. "Very well," he said. "Climb onto my back. You can go no further."

Efet gasped. "I can't do that! If I let go, I'll fall to my death!"

"If you don't try, you'll die for certain."

"The momentum of my body will pull you lose from your grip, we'll both fall."

"My grip is sure and strong," Deleth assured her. "Try."

Summoning all her will power, Efet swung her body at Deleth and at the same moment, released her hold on one side of the twine. She caught hold of him, wrapping him 'round his waist with her legs, and a moment later her other hand also found a hold on his shoulder. Her twine fell to the ground; they could retrieve it easily enough. Deleth swayed a bit, but he maintained his grip. Looking over his shoulder, Efet marveled at the sight of his fingers piercing the tree trunk, digging with tremendous force. His feet were used to brace against the trunk, and they descended, one arm's span at a time, to the great knot of roots at the base.

When she alighted to the forest floor, Efet grabbed her twine, then turned to Deleth and said, "That could've been avoided had you brought me down safely, from the beginning, as I asked!"

"You did not ask," Deleth informed her, giving her a baleful glare with his narrowed eyes. "You demanded I bring you down. I think you must've grown up spoiled and pampered, with many servants."

Efet pouted. "I did not! My family was middle class on Cardassia. We had no servants." She paused. _I should be on my best behavior. He's really my only ally here, and if I alienate him, I'll die on this rock._ "From now on, I will be sure to ask, as you wish."

Deleth's glare shifted into a look of mild surprise. "There is no ' from now on', because I am leaving you here and having nothing more to do with you from this moment forward." He actually stuck his nose into the air as he started to walk away.

"Wait, one more question!" Efet called after him. "If you don't care what happens to me, why did you save me in the first place?"

That had the desired effect. Deleth stopped, but did not turn around. Efet could tell he was trying to generate a believable answer. It would've been easy to let her drown, or be dashed to pieces in the flood, or even without the flood, she would've died shortly from malnutrition. Efet was no expert on other species, but she knew Romulans had a reputation for being xenophobic, wily, and suspicious. She had never even heard of a Romulan coming to the rescue of an alien.

"You don't know why you saved me," Efet breathed. "You actually don't, do you?"

"Of course I do!" Deleth hissed at her.

"Oh, then please enlighten me!" Efet approached him, struggling through the vegetation and mud. Just as she expected, Deleth shot her another look, but he had no answer. Efet suspected, though she didn't dare voice it, that he was _lonely_. He'd said there were no others of his kind here, and he looked so bedraggled, she knew he must've been trapped in this camp for some time. Possibly months. A long time to be alone. Efet still didn't know if there were other prisoners in this valley, but she felt sure she was the least threatening of any of them, if they existed.

"I don't owe you any answers!" Deleth evidently decided he was trying that approach. "You are just some weakling little Cardassian with no allies and no chance of surviving this prison."

"I survived just fine on my own until last night."

"The Klingons gave you supplies, that's the only reason you made it this far. That, and dumb luck. I was given no supplies when I arrived here. I didn't bat my eyes at the guards and simper until they--"

Efet was livid. Her eyes flashed with fury as she said, "Don't you dare imply what I think you're implying! You deviant! The Klingons had mercy on me."

"They took pity on you!" Deleth spat. "A Romulan would rather _die_ than be pitied by an inferior race like the Klingons!"

"Well, I'm not a Romulan," she said, jutting out her chin. "I was just trying to do some good engineering and serve my state, and look where it got me. Here, _with you_ , in this hellish jungle. But I'm not giving up. I may be weaker than you. I'm not a soldier, and I can't pilot any birds-of-prey. But I swore I wasn't going to die here. I'm going to scale those rock walls somehow and get a signal out and live a long life and die in my own bed! And you can just stay here and be secure in your superiority and rot in this jungle if you want!" With that, she tried valiantly to stomp off, but the mud made stomping nigh-impossible. Despite this, she had worked herself into a mighty huff, and felt that she had expressed herself well.

"There's no way out."

"What did you say?"

Deleth had drawn in on himself, and in the dim light on the forest floor, he was cast in shadows. She couldn't make out his eyes. "There's no way out of this valley. I've tried. The rock walls block any signals in or out. Even the Klingons have to summit them to communicate with their own starships."

Efet felt great disappointment crushing down on her. "You're sure?" she asked. "You've been to the walls?"

"See for yourself. I can take you to the walls if you won't believe me. They cannot be climbed without specialized equipment. Far to the east, you'll find the open side is a massive waterfall. That, too, is impassable, and no one could survive going over the falls. Unless Cardassians can fly, you are never getting off this rock."

"No..." Efet knew, of course, it couldn't be easy. If escape was easy, the Klingons would never have left a skeleton crew of guards watching them. They must be truly sure that this valley was a giant cage from which there was no way out. But she'd held out some foolish hope that she could think of something, and she wasn't ready to give up just yet. "Take me there, please! Perhaps you and I together can find a way."


	5. Chapter 5

Deleth paused to wipe sweat from his brow and then scowl. The heat of this jungle must be driving him mad. That was his only excuse for why he decided to bring the Cardassian woman, Efet, with him on this trek to the great wall. She could not keep up with him on a march, she had no provisions left, no stamina, no weapons and no military training, and she loved to prattle on and ask him irrelevant questions. Deleth had never studied Cardassians in depth; few Romulans bothered to, as the Cardassians were not among their top priorities. Mostly he had been told they were petty and inferior, with a reputation for loving the sound of their own voices. So far, Efet had proven that last one correct. Deleth had, from a cursory glance at a holo or two, vaguely thought they were rather ugly. Their scales and sickly complexions were not pleasing to the eye, not that Deleth had any taste for alien women. No, he had never wanted to dishonor his bloodline by introducing an outsider. He had heard there were some _Rihannsu_ who had mated with Vulcans, humans, even a handful of -- _ugh_ \-- Klingons, but he'd never associated with any of them.

Efet sighed deeply and leaned herself against the trunk of a tree. "Can we stop and take a rest? I'm exhausted."

"We'll never get anywhere if we stop every couple of hours," Deleth said. On his own, he could make it to the rock wall in a day, but with her slowing him down it could take three times as long.

"I don't see any rush," Efet told him, as she began fixing the braid in her hair. "As far as we know, no one's coming to find either of us, so what does it matter if it takes us a little longer to get there?"

"It matters to me!" Deleth pulled a face. He had wondered at first if Efet was some kind of spy, captured while on a mission with the Obsidian Order. But the longer he spent with her, the more it seemed that she was telling him the truth about being a civilian engineer. He couldn't imagine the Obsidian Order sending out an agent with no survival skills. He really should just walk away and leave her to her fate.

"It matters to you," Efet asked him, looking him in the eyes.

"Yes," he said irritably.

"All right. If it matters to you." She shoved herself off her resting spot and resumed her march with what seemed to be a great burst of will. She was now walking side by side with him, despite her obvious exertion, and he found himself glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Deleth was a little impressed. She had resumed their trek without further complaining, which he had not expected.

"What's the Romulan word for _hello_?"

"Why do you want to know?" Deleth's suspicion flared back up. _Is she a spy after all?_ Perhaps she was simply a very good actress.

"We're going to be stuck together for who knows how long," Efet said. "We might as well get to know one another. That requires conversation. Thus, I am making conversation."

Deleth pondered this. He was not a linguist or a teacher, but he could see no harm in humoring her request. It could even be called sensible. "We say _jolan tru_. It is a standard greeting for hello, goodbye, good day, good night..."

"You don't have a hand greeting like Vulcans?"

Deleth bristled. "I am not a Vulcan!"

Efet made a gesture with her hands that he presumed was conciliatory in intention. "My apologies. I know you're not Vulcan. I just thought, since Vulcans and Romulans are so similar --"

"We are nothing alike," sniffed Deleth.

"Ohhh," said Efet, pausing to climb down a rock jutting in their path. "Nothing alike huh? You certainly have the ears. Don't you have green blood? Do you also only mate every seven year-"

That did it. Deleth vaulted over that rock, landed on his feet, and twisted around so he faced Efet. "I told you, we are nothing like Vulcans! We don't repress ourselves and go through that ridiculous _pon farr_. We mate when we choose to mate! Nor do we betroth our children in infancy like barbarians."

Efet made a soft humming sound and thrust out her lower lip. "Judging from that flush on your face, you _do_ have green blood."

Deleth, annoyed, stalked ahead of her, not caring if she were falling behind. She called out " _Jolan tru_ ", and he stopped short.

"Did I pronounce it correctly?" Efet asked him, trying to catch up and mostly failing due to the mud hindering her. " _Jolan tru_ , Deleth."

"You are emphasizing the wrong syllables," Deleth started to say, then caught himself. "What am I doing, you don't really care about learning Romulan. I shouldn't be bothering."

"You're wrong," said Efet. "I do care about learning Romulan, and I don't know what gave you the impression I didn't. If I'm stuck here with you, I might as well put the time to good use. Very few Cardassians study Romulan."

"No one on Romulus studies Cardassian," Deleth told her haughtily. As he anticipated, she stiffened a little. The implied slight to her species had hit it's mark. But then Efet drew herself up and her shoulders seemed to relax.

"Then we shall exchange languages! And you'll soon be the first Romulan fluent in Cardassian! So, the standard Cardassian greeting is _salmakt_. It's considered appropriate for virtually all situations--"

"Why in the world would I want to learn Cardassian?"

"Please don't interrupt," said Efet breezily. "Don't tell me you don't think you can learn an _inferior_ tongue like Cardassian. Why, I'll be horrified by the state of the Romulan educational system if so. You seem like an intelligent enough fellow, I'm sure you can pick it up with minimal effort. As I was saying, _salmakt_ is the standard greeting..."

Deleth's first Cardassian lesson went on for the better part of an hour, by the end of which he was comfortable with their pronouns, the regular verb endings, and he was confident he could order a glass of kanar anywhere in Cardassian space and, as Efet put it, "scare the bartender". She kept up with him, despite the increasing look of discomfort on her face, from what Deleth assumed were her aching feet. Their lesson was only interrupted when Efet spied something and cried out, "My pack!" and ran a couple of meters into the underbrush.

She emerged holding a woven sack, which she held like it was her most precious possession. "I thought it was lost forever!" Efet told him. She looked about hopefully. "Do you think we can find my firestarter kit anywhere near here?"

"We won't need it," Deleth assured her. They hiked up to the highest ground in the nearby environs, and Deleth climbed a tree to find just what he was looking for -- the dense, dry moss that grew on one side. Efet watched curiously as he broke off some stalks from a flowering plant, then scratched them with his nails to reveal the ribbon-like fibers. He dug out a shallow depression on the ground, placed his moss within it, and gathered his bits of wood as well as the two flattest rocks he could find. He rolled the bits of fiber into a small tubular shape, then placed it between the two rocks. Efet's eyes grew huge with wonder as he rubbed the two rocks together, with the bit of fiber trapped between them, until smoke was pouring out. "This is miraculous!" she said.

When Deleth was sure the fiber was hot enough from the friction, he dropped it into the pile of moss and blew a soft breath over it. A fire sputtered to life, pouring out blue smoke. Efet ran to find some twigs, and they fed the fire until it crackled pleasantly. "I've never seen fire made like that," Efet told him. "I've heard of the 'banging two rocks together' method, but even then they have to be the right kinds of rocks."

Deleth soaked in the praise. "This method works even in humid conditions, like this jungle."

Efet looked around and asked, "I don't suppose you know what's safe to eat here as well?"

 _Ah, that's what you want, food_. Deleth showed her where to dig to find the little tubers that grew under the flowering plants with the fuzzy yellow stalks. She was so hungry she wanted to eat it raw, but Deleth took the tubers and shoved them in the coals of the fire, let them cook for a minute, then used a stick to push them out. Efet snatched one up and began to gnaw at it frantically. He took his and began devouring it somewhat more calmly. It didn't really taste like anything in particular -- he had no spices and no means of making sauce -- but Deleth had been eating them since he came to this planet so he knew they'd keep at least a Romulan alive.

After she'd eaten her second tuber, Efet must've felt good enough to ask him, "How did you know what was safe to eat here?"

"I experimented," Deleth told her, explaining the Romulan custom of trying just a tiny bite of an unknown plant, chewing it while keeping careful track of how their bodies responded to it. They'd start with the tiniest flake and work their way up to an entire mouthful, and if the plant did not produce an allergic reaction or poisoning, they knew it was safe to consume. This was how his people had found new foodstuffs before they had sensors that could analyze a plant for any nutritional or poisonous qualities.

"Oh." Efet looked concerned. "I suppose many Romulans have died of trial-and-error doing this over the centuries."

"Of course. But they died so that our people could learn and survive, and thrive. That is not a worthless death."

She pulled her legs in close, wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the fire. "Do you think we'll die worthless deaths here?"

Deleth had asked himself that question a thousand times. He had stared at those sheer rock walls until he feared he'd go mad and throw himself against them, beat his fists on them futilely until he exhausted himself. He had wondered if he would grow old here, increasingly mad from isolation every year, until he withered away as a gibbering animal. In his worst moments, he imagined his people finally finding this place, searching for survivors, and finding his skeleton and identifying him with dental records, the devastation of his family as they learned how he died, forgotten and alone, in this remote hellhole prison. He looked at Efet and saw some of those same thoughts reflected back at him in her eyes. He wondered if there was anyone out there waiting for her safe return; he thought there must be.

"I don't know," Deleth said at last. He poked at a tuber cooking in the coals. He'd have to teach her what more she could eat, he thought. In case the Klingons ever came for him and she was left alone. He wondered why the Klingons had even bothered imprisoning her here, when she was so weak and helpless. Surely she could've been held for ransom instead? The only thing he could come up with was that perhaps one of the Klingons had a sadistic streak. He doubted the Klingons had any respect for Cardassians, and perhaps her being female was part of it -- a means to humiliate the enemy by capturing their women. He even wondered, horribly, if one of the Klingons had expected that Deleth or another prisoner would kill or abuse her. Was her suffering entertainment?

"Deleth," she said softly. "Deleth, I can't pull my boots off."

"What?" he was so confused for a moment he just stared at her.

Efet tugged at her boot. "I think -- I think my feet are swollen! I can't pull off my boots." Snorting softly, Deleth rose and went to her, stilling her with a hand on her knee, before kneeling and grasping her boot and giving it a hard tug. It popped off, and he sat it beside her, then turned his attention to the other, which joined its mate in moments. He then released her feet and sat back down. Efet's neck scales were curiously flushed, which he took to be embarrassment.

"Ah, thank you." She stretched and wiggled her toes, warming them by the fire. Deleth ate his last tuber while watching her comb out her black hair with her fingers. Her hair was quite long and very dark and silky -- hair like that would've been the pride of any Romulan woman. It was so shiny and looked so clean he assumed she must have natural oils that kept it in such good condition. She let it fall loose about her face, then balled up that little woven sack and arranged it into a pillow, stretching out next to the fire as though ready to sleep. The sun was setting, and the shadows grew deeper. Deleth reached in one of his pockets and found some of the little mint sticks he enjoyed so much, offering her one.

"What is this?" Efet examined it curiously.

"It's for your teeth." Deleth showed her how to chew on it to clean her teeth. It tasted delightful, and she made a pleased sound as she set to work.

Deleth made himself a little nest from the extra moss, settling in for sleep. Unlike Efet, he didn't want to sleep right next to the fire, which was dying down now to a dull red glow. It was now dark enough that it was difficult to see anything more than a meter away. In his old life, he always liked to stay up late, but here, where the darkness made it almost impossible to accomplish anything at night, he had gotten accustomed to falling asleep early and waking with the dawn.

"Deleth, thank you," murmured Efet. She sounded half asleep already.

"For what?" he asked, mostly to hear her voice again.

"For everything. I would be lost without you..."


	6. Chapter 6

"So what's the Romulan word for 'river'?"

Deleth couldn't imagine why Efet would ever be discussing rivers with any other Romulan she'd ever encounter; in his opinion, she'd be better served learning the words for 'starship', 'warp drive', and any number of engineering terms. Yet she insisted on learning the most random vocabulary, and he had nothing better to do on this hot, humid trek through the jungle than to humor her.

" _Atlai_."

" _Atlai_ ," she repeated, trying the word out on her tongue. Her accent was still terrible, but Deleth had been impressed to find she never forgot a word once learned. Perhaps there was something to those Cardassian photographic memories.

They had set out for the river that morning. They both needed water, and as Efet was so fond of reminding him, they badly needed to bathe and wash their clothes. They still had no way to transport water with them on the trek to the nearest rock wall, a journey that Deleth knew would take him perhaps ten hours on his own, but probably a few hours longer than that if Efet was trailing behind him. Once they reached the wall, they still had to make it back to the river -- with no water rations and living off whatever they foraged along the way. Efet had been no athlete in her old life, Deleth knew for a certainty. She did not complain, along he could tell from the strain on her face that her body ached from all the walking. At least she was in no danger of overheating -- Deleth came from a hot climate, but his ancient ancestors had evolved on Vulcan, a mostly desert landscape. The jungle humidity that left him so miserable did not seem to bother Efet in the slightest.

"Yes!" Efet cried out in joy when she spotted the river. They both forgot themselves somewhat as they ran toward the roaring, churning waters. Although the flooding was over, the river was still wilder than usual, throwing white foam and swollen by the rains. They had to follow it downstream a ways until they found some of the calm pools made by spillover from the river. Efet and Deleth threw themselves to their knees and drank greedily, like wild animals.

Panting, Deleth sat back on his haunches and wiped his face. Efet was still sipping from the pool, strands of her silky dark hair having escaped her bun and fallen down around her face, the tips just touching the water. When she looked up at him, she cleared her throat in an obnoxious manner.

"Are you ill?" Deleth asked, his brow wrinkling in dismay.

Efet huffed. "I am not ill! I was trying to discretely request that you leave and let me bathe myself in peace!"

Oh. _Oh_. Deleth turned away from her. Another pool lay a couple meters away, this one a bit deeper than the one they'd drank from. An idea came to him.

"Let us turn our backs to one another," Deleth proposed. "We can undress in something approaching privacy and bathe ourselves. When I am ready to emerge from my pool, I'll call out to you and you can close your eyes while I dress myself."

Efet shot him a furious, narrow-eyed glare. "You want us to bathe next to one another, without even a screen for privacy? Have you gone mad?"

"I'm not wandering off into that wretched jungle for hours while you splash about in here," Deleth told her. "Besides, it's not as if I'd know when you were done. I could return and catch you unawares. This way, we'll both know when the other needs some privacy, and we won't have to split up in this dangerous place."

Efet seemed to weigh her options. At last she blurted out, "All right! But you _cannot_ look at me."

This time, it was Deleth who was offended. "Why would I ever want to look at your naked body?" Efet ignored the comment as she turned her back to him and began unbuttoning her top. A bit flustered, Deleth quickly turned himself around and began undressing. It was really rather silly for her to be so hung up over her nudity, he thought to himself. She'd even seen him naked! Not that he was in the habit of being naked in front of females -- or anyone else. His undershirt joined the rest of his clothing in a little pile, and then he waded into his pool, clenching his teeth a bit at the cool water. He could see the filth floating off his body, and somewhat embarrassed, he bent his knees and submerged himself to get his hair wet.

He emerged, shaking himself with a roar. Behind him, he could hear Efet's delighted giggles as she bathed herself. Resolving to ignore her, Deleth grabbed his dirty undershirt and dipped it in the water, wringing it out and then slapping it against a rock to clean it. That done, he next cleaned his socks, then his underwear. His outerwear was water and dirt repellent, designed for extreme circumstances, so he left that alone. More splashing behind him told him that Efet was, likewise, cleaning her garments.

"You just can't imagine how awful it is spending days like this," Efet sighed. "Cardassians so value cleanliness. We're a little mad about it! When I was a girl, just big enough to walk, I couldn't even touch the sandpit at the children's play area without my mother running to wipe my hands clean. I think she must've changed my clothing five times a day until I was old enough to keep myself tidy." The splashing ceased, and Deleth realized she must've gone still. "Is there anyone back on Romulus waiting for your safe return?"

"I have never been to Romulus," Deleth bit out.

"Oh!" Efet sounded genuinely surprised. "I had no idea. So you're from a colony world? Where is your homeworld?"

"That is not for you to know."

"Ah, you're just as cagey as ever. I'd love to know what your fevered imagination thinks I could do with that information." Water sloshed, and Efet said, "Close your eyes, I'm climbing out."

Keeping his eyes tightly shut, Deleth listened. He listened to the rustling of some cloth, then Efet's voice again. "You didn't answer my first question. About whether there's anyone out there waiting for you."

Deleth groaned. "That is --"

"-- not for me to know?" Efet sighed, and said, "You can open your eyes now. I'm decent."

He cracked open an eye and looked over to see Efet wearing her jacket, which was zipped all the way up. Her other clothes were laying on some rocks to dry. She climbed up a little ways to perch on another rock. Her bare legs stuck out of her jacket; she had long legs, which seemed to be most of her height, and Deleth was astonished to see she had scales on her knees. He looked away from her quickly, trying to finish his own bathing. "Close your eyes," Deleth called up to her.

Gamely, Efet closed her eyes. Deleth kept watch on her as he slipped back into his underwear, but his other clothes were too wet to put back on. He clambered up on the rocks near her and sat, wrapping his arms around his legs to hold in his warmth. After a moment Efet cracked an eye open and, seeing him there, smiled brightly. She went back to combing out her long black hair with her fingers. Deleth fidgeted a bit and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"You never give _me_ any personal answers, so..."

 _All right_. "If you answer my question, I'll answer one of yours."

"Negotiation. Now we're getting somewhere." Efet was smiling again. She combed her hair into three sections and began braiding it. "I'm amenable."

"Why do you have another little.... spoon... there at the crown of your sternum?" He touched the little notch on his own breastplate unconsciously. Her jacket, although modest enough, was cut just low enough for him to see the inverted tear-shaped ridge, the same size and shape as the characteristic Cardassian 'spoon' on her forehead, nestled between her clavicle bones. Her clavicles themselves bore a little line of scales, which he supposed had evolved as a sort of armor. That seemed to make sense given the heavy ridges of scales ringing her eyes -- natural protection for the delicate organs of the eyes. She even had little ridges running along the edges of her chin and jaw, and in almost all humanoid species these bones were some of the most easily broken.

His question seemed to have shocked Efet still and silent. She blinked three long blinks at him, then that sly smile appeared once more. "Deleth, I-- well, I will endeavor to give you a very scientific answer. Not all Cardassians have this trait, mind you. I am from Andak province, where this is a dominant trait. I say this so you don't go asking any other Cardassians where their 'extra spoon' is." Efet had to pause to compose herself, but went on. "It is called a _chufa_ , and it is a gland. To my people it has a certain... erotic appeal."

Deleth was certain his ears were bright green. He had never, not once, imagined himself mostly naked discussing secondary sexual characteristics with an alien woman. He had never even imagined discussing anything of this sort with a Romulan woman -- a Romulan woman would probably have killed him for being impudent enough to ask her about anything involving sexuality and mating, but Efet was just giggling softly. "I see," he said at last. "I had imagined it was a vestigial sensory organ of some kind." 

Efet's giggles bubbled into full laughter at the lameness of his response. Deleth wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. 

"All right, all right," she said at last. "Oh, I have to stop laughing! It's just... the look on your face! Oh! If I could take a picture." After a moment she seemed to have control of herself again. "My turn now. So, why do some Romulans have facial ridges and others do not? There are some I've seen in holos who I can't tell apart from Vulcans, but you have the 'classic' Romulan look. Remember, I answered you truly so you have to do the same."

Deleth was almost insulted by the simplicity of the question. "I am a Northerner," he told her. "My facial ridges are typical of Romulans from the Northern continent. The others you've seen who you say resemble Vulcans come from the Southern continent. But there are nowadays many mixed families, so some members of a family may have ridges and others do not. That wasn't so a few hundred years ago."

"I see!" Efet's piercing blue eyes sparkled with intrigue. "So it's just normal genetic variation then. Like my _chufa_."

"Yes, like your... sexual gland."

Efet's hid a laugh behind her hand. She seemed to be amused by how embarrassed he was, and perhaps some mischievous impulse drove her next question: "So, which do Romulan women prefer? Ridges or no ridges?"

Furious with embarrassment, Deleth stormed back down to his clothes and began yanking on his trousers. "Don't taunt me!"

"I didn't mean to taunt you! I'm just curious, is all. Please don't be cross with me, Deleth. Come, join me. Sit back down." Efet begged him to return, and she sounded contrite enough that his anger faded away. Deleth relaxed a little, and although he didn't return to his seat, his motions weren't as angry as before. He was reaching for his undershirt when Efet rose to her feet and placed a hand on his forearm. Perplexed, Deleth turned to her.

"What happened to you?" she asked him, and her fingers touched the jagged scar that completely wrapped around his left forearm, just under his deltoid muscle. He'd kept the arm either covered or facing away from her before, hiding it from her view, but in his anger Deleth realized he'd forgotten and Efet had seen it. "This scar looks like something wrapped around your arm and almost cut it off."

Of all the things he didn't want to answer, his scar was at the top of his list. "It's nothing," he grunted, shaking her off and yanking his shirt over his head.

He couldn't look in Efet's reproachful eyes. "Deleth, that scar can't be that old. I know Romulans must have dermal regenerators, so you couldn't have gotten that scar years ago. What did that to you?"

"Our discussion is over!"


	7. Chapter 7

"Deleth, wait!" Efet tried to scramble up the rocks after him. She felt awful; she hadn't meant to upset him, but that angry scar marring his arm had thrown her for a loop. Deleth, still so sure-footed even on these slippery rocks, easily summitted the ridge over the river and left her behind, still desperately picking her way up to him. "Deleth, come back! Please!" she cried out after him.

He'd climbed a ridge of great boulders that rose up over the riverbank. The massive trees that overhung the river dropped thick ropes of vine into her path; the spray from the river flew up into her face; and Efet had to grab handfuls of the little bushy weeds that grew from muddy cracks in the boulder to pull herself upward. In her haste, she hadn't even put her shoes on, and she grimaced at the feel of the slick rocks under her tender feet. At last, she dragged herself up to find Deleth crouching on the very edge of the ridge by a bent-backed tree so old, it's gnarled roots had grown over and around the boulder, reaching down to plunge into the river one way, and towards the canopy of trees the other. Efet was near to crying by the time she limped over to Deleth, who kept his back to her.

"Please don't leave me behind." Efet cringed at the crack in her voice. "I-I didn't mean to upset you." _I'll die out here without you_ went unsaid. When he did not speak, she went to her knees and crawled up beside him, seating herself on the curve of one of the gnarled old tree's roots. He was wearing his shirt now, that ridiculous pointy shouldered shirt that covered the scar on his arm. He was looking down at the roaring river, just over the edge of the boulder, and for a moment she had a mad fear he'd throw himself in.

"You cannot ask me about my scar," Deleth said. His voice was even; he'd regained control of himself. He turned his head to look at Efet, and his eyes were large and sorrowful. "You _cannot_ ," he emphasized.

She swallowed. "I won't."

Deleth went still again, but did not break their gaze. "I shouldn't have yelled at you and frightened you like that. I'm -- I'm sorry, Efet. You meant no harm. You were just concerned about my injury."

A Romulan apology? Efet actually felt a little dizzy. How many aliens had ever had a Romulan look them in the eyes and sincerely apologize for their behavior? She'd always been told they were too proud and spiteful to do anything like that. For the first time, Efet wondered what sort of misconceptions Deleth had been taught about _her_ people. They were really both victims of circumstance; each of them molded by their cultures and political forces outside of their control. She managed to hold that intense stare and nodded.

"If you ever want to tell me anything, I'll listen. And if not -- I'll respect that. You have my word, Deleth."

He sniffed, and then looked down at his hands, which were folded in front of him. "Let's go back and build camp." 

Relieved he was ready to start over, Efet went to stand, but in her eagerness she moved a little too fast, and her feet slipped on the knobbly old root she had been sitting on. She felt her heart skip about five beats, and her hands flew out to catch hold of something -- anything. She caught hold of the root but it was slippery, sliding through her hands. Her body slid down and she felt her feet fly out into the void over the edge. Efet flailed in terror, hearing the river roaring far beneath her, and dug her fingers in, catching hold of one of those pathetic weeds growing out of a crevice. She distantly thought she heard Deleth scream her name.

Her bare legs dangled over the edge of the ridge. Her feet brushed against the face of the boulder, but it was too slick and she couldn't find a foothold. She was holding herself up by her grip on that bushy weed, the stalk of which was biting into her palms. Deleth's face appeared above her, and he thrust a hand down to her. 

"Take my hand!"

"I can't!" Efet was shaking with terror. She could feel the weed's roots giving way under her body weight. "I'll slip and fall!"

"I'll hold you! Take my hand!" Deleth pleaded.

Summoning everything that was left of her strength and bravery, and silently offering up a farewell to her friends and family if she did not survive, Efet reached up and grasped his hand. His fingers were terrifyingly strong, and _hot_ to the touch. They closed around her hand like a vice and he lifted up. For a moment, Efet was suspended by the one hand, dangling over the edge of the ridge out into space, the river crashing and roiling below, and then he pulled her up and to him, so she could cling to his chest as he brought them both back to safety. 

"Open your eyes."

Efet shook her head.

"Open your eyes," he repeated. "We're safe."

Cautiously, Efet peeked an eye open. They were crouching on the ridge, about a meter from the edge, and Deleth was still holding her. She had yet to release her grip on his shirt. She looked up at him, and was surprised to see his face contorted in concern, his eyes wide, and that a slight tremor of adrenaline was still racking his body. He'd actually been... frightened? That she would go over the edge and die? Efet was struck by another realization: Deleth was just as afraid of being left alone here as she was. Maybe more. She was reminded again of how young he seemed. After a moment, Deleth seemed to realize he still held her in his arms; his arms slackened, releasing her, and he drew a shaky breath. 

"Help me remember, as I've lost count," Deleth said as they carefully made their way back down to the pools. "That's the, what, fifth time I've saved your life?"

"I'll repay you someday," Efet told him sweetly.

Deleth made a rude noise but said nothing. They made it back to their (now dry) clothing and as they dressed, a thought seemed to come to him. "I have to teach you to fight."

"To fight?" Efet looked perplexed. "Why?"

"In case the Klingons come for us. Or some of the other prisoners. There'll be more soon, there always are."

"I've never been in a fight in my life!"

"All the more reason to learn now."

After they made their little camp, Deleth found a couple sticks and tossed one to Efet. She fumbled and dropped it, then snatched it up from the muddy ground, feeling very small under Deleth's eyes. She had narrowly escaped death by drowning and falling several times, and only because he'd pulled her out of them. She knew she slowed him down and felt like a burden. She wanted him to respect her but her talents -- engineering and taking equipment apart and putting it back together, better -- could not be shown in this jungle environment. Deleth held the stick with both hands, one at each end, and she copied him.

"I'll show you the most common attacks and the counters for the bat'leth--"

"This is a bat'leth?" Efet asked in disbelief. She'd seen the iconic Klingon weapon in holos, and these two pitiful sticks did not look much like bat'leths.

"It's the only thing we have," Deleth said airily. He dropped into a stance, circled her, then performed a slow, deliberate slashing motion that Efet leaped back from. "Ah! Good instincts. So, as you're so much shorter than them, Klingons will usually slash downwards at you--"

Efet was panting after only three minutes of training. "Deleth, how am I going to beat a Klingon warrior in single combat?"

"I've seen it done," Deleth told her, resetting them both to run through a counter-attack again. "I'm a Romulan, remember? My people have defeated Klingons time and time again. They are big and fierce, but overconfident -- and they underestimate little aliens like yourself."

Efet took heart at that, but she still wasn't sure why they needed to train to fight Klingons at all. "You don't really think the guards will come for us, do you? Why not kill us to start with?"

"I've seen the Klingon guards come for prisoners," Deleth said in a dark tone.

Efet's eyes popped. "Oh."

"I have tried to avoid the guards as much as possible. But the rock walls block the signals even from their own people, and I've seen the guards take a hovercraft over the walls to communicate with some kind of array up there." He nodded vaguely in the direction of the massive rock wall in the distance. "Once in awhile, a ship lands and brings prisoners. But prisoners never leave alive. And sometimes, Klingons come and they -- hunt."

"Hunt?!" Efet gasped.

"I don't think the guards here are Qo'NoS' best and brightest. I suspect the guards are, in some way, condemned here as well. They may be entertaining themselves." Deleth growled through his teeth. "This valley is a cage, and we are the prey trapped inside."

Efet thought of the young Klingon guard, the one who had pity on her that first day and given her rations. How could he be a murderer and a monster the way Deleth characterized the Klingon guards? But, she rationalized, Deleth had been here longer than her -- months, perhaps. Some of the guards had come and gone in that time, and it sounded like there had been other prisoners, prisoners who had not survived. It was possible some of the guards had been sadistic individuals. After a break for water, they resumed their training. She followed along gamely as Deleth tried to teach her how to use an attacker's own momentum against him to send him crashing to the ground. Her first effort failed spectacularly. 

Deleth smiled fondly as she huffed and puffed, trying to send him sprawling. "Try again."

"Ugh!" Efet flipped her braid away from her face. "I'm just not a born fighter!"

That seemed to surprise Deleth. "What, do you think I was born to fight? I wasn't any worse than you when I started at the academy. You can learn, as I did."

Efet gave him a sidelong look. "Aren't you a warrior?" It certainly seemed like Deleth knew how to fight, and he was physically strong and intimidating. She had vaguely assumed, based on all that, he'd been part of some Romulan shock troops that had been captured by the Klingons.

"I was just a pilot before I was brought here," Deleth told her. 

If Deleth, with all his physical prowess, had spent his entire career keeping a helmsman's chair warm on a Romulan starship's bridge, then Efet did _not_ want to meet the sort of Romulans who made hand-to-hand combat into their careers, that was for sure.


	8. Chapter 8

That night, after the embers died down to a dull red glow and it was time for sleep, Deleth found that he could not rest. They'd built their little camp in a sandy area that seemed to have been left by a long-ago change in the river's course, and bedded down next to their dying fire. Efet, exhausted from their training, fell asleep almost as soon as she lay her head down. Deleth could hear her breathing fall into a steady rhythm, just another sound to add to the symphony of the jungle at night. Aside from the faint crackling and hissing of the embers, the jungle was alive with animals hunting, calling to mates, or climbing from one place to another. In the distance, Deleth could hear the roar of the river. Tomorrow, they would resume their journey to the great rock wall.

Deleth had made himself a comfortable little depression in the sand, and for a minute he fell asleep, only to startle awake, overcome by feelings of dread and fright. For some reason, he thought Efet wasn't there anymore, and he had to crawl over next to her to assure himself she was still there. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he could make out the curves of her face and body, and when he placed his head next to her, he could hear her breathing once again over the jungle's cacophony. He sighed, feeling his body relax. A year ago, Deleth would have stepped over a dying Cardassian and thought nothing of it. If anyone had told he'd be waking in the middle of the night just to check that a Cardassian woman was still near him and safe, he'd have laughed, or maybe even gotten angry. _I'm still a little shaken up by her brush with death earlier today_ , he realized. Once, he'd had so much more in his life -- family, a career, his duty -- but now, after so long spent alone here, the focus of his existence had, in just a few days, narrowed down to keeping Efet alive. He'd almost accepted that he would go mad and die alone in this prison, and now, with something to live for, Deleth suspected this was a whole new kind of madness.

He went to crawl away but the thought of being far from her was unbearable. Instead, he rolled onto his side and moved close enough that his back was touching her shoulders. Deleth hoped that by keeping physical contact, he'd calm down enough to sleep -- with their clothing between them, he'd not even pick up empathic impressions from her, as he had when she touched his hands. All Romulans had some form of empathic ability, but few had anything close to the touch-telepathy of their Vulcan cousins. Deleth had never bothered developing his very far, but when he'd grabbed her hand (and before, in their first meeting, when she'd tried to pry his hands away from her) he'd gotten impressions from her -- no thoughts, of course, but some feelings. First the sharp terror of their first meetings, and then the intense gratefulness when he'd saved her and pulled her back from the brink. He thought Cardassians were psi-null, or at least he hoped so, since the thought of her sensing his emotions was humiliating. Deleth had only touched and caressed one woman, Narshara, from back in his academy days, and after a few stolen moments of paradise she had torn herself from him, rejected him, almost crushed him beneath her boot. He'd been so relieved to graduate and receive a different posting than her (something he'd begged his uncle to help him with, as Deleth couldn't bear being trapped with Narshara in a starship for months on end). _Look where that got me_ , Deleth thought morosely. _Trapped here in this prison._

Efet stretched her legs, rolled over, and ended up pressing the front of her body up against his back, no doubting soaking up his body heat. In a moment her breathing was as steady as ever, but Deleth had a new and unexpected problem in the form of her breasts pressing up against his back. He'd never touched Narshara's breasts, but Efet's breasts felt very soft and tempting where she had them pressed up against him. Deleth cursed to himself as he felt his body respond. It was mere physical stimulation, he told himself, nothing more. Deleth slammed his eyes shut and willed himself to not to respond to evolution's ancient call. _She's not even Romulan_ , he told himself. He didn't know if Efet was beautiful by Cardassian standards, but he told himself it didn't matter that her facial features seemed harmonious and her hair so glossy and black, and her breasts so soft. She wasn't Romulan and she wasn't appealing in any way. _Her breasts are probably grey and have little scales on them_ , he thought in a misguided attempt to repulse himself, as all that accomplished was make him imagine her breasts and what it would be like to touch them.

He'd just summoned the willpower to roll away from her when Efet tucked her face into his neck, seeking even more warmth. As soon as skin touched skin, Deleth was hit with emotional impressions from her: contentment and comfort, and then she seemed to pick up something from him, as _desire_ flooded them both in some sort of feedback loop. In response, Efet murmured softly and her lips brushed against the back of her neck, which was enough to snap him out of his daze temporarily. He rolled over, putting a few inches between them, and his face burned from embarrassment. He was straining at his trousers and an animal part of his brain wanted to go right back to her, wake her up, and take her right here, next to the dying fire in this sandy pit. A more rational part of his brain thought she'd be horrified by his intentions. At least Narshara had been Romulan, Efet was Cardassian and he wasn't even part of her species. He was probably quite ugly by her standards, and Deleth didn't think he could take another rejection.

He crawled a few feet away and lay on his back, staring up at the canopy, until sleep overtook him quite suddenly. His dreams were snippets of his old life, worn and dogged around the edges; he dreamed of walking the halls of his old academy, then he was on his starship. He tried to enter his quarters only to find himself lost in the dense jungle foliage, and he could _hear_ Efet's voice but he couldn't see her...

Deleth startled awake again, but this time it was morning and Efet was standing over the fire. He rubbed at his face, a little taken aback. The last few days, Deleth had always been the first one awake, and usually he was preparing food for both of them by the time Efet yawned and lifted her head.

Efet was using her crude knife to scrape the rind off a melon he'd shown her was safe to eat. She was completely absorbed in her task, her tongue peeking out from between her lips in concentration, and she had taken off her jacket, so he could see her breasts moving just a little under her blouse -- Deleth turned his head from her, horrified with himself. He could've pretended last night was just a product of his sad and lonely mind, if only _he wasn't thinking the exact same thoughts this morning!_

" _Jolan tru_ ," Efet greeted him, cracking a smile. "I was beginning to worry about you. You've never slept in like this before. You're not sick are you?"

Deleth desperately didn't want to answer that question. "Thank you for preparing food for us." He latched onto the only neutral topic he could think of as he sat up and combed his hands through his tangled hair. Efet placed slices of melon onto two large leaves that would serve as plates and sat beside him, offering him one, which he accepted.

"Today, while we walk, I was thinking we'd start our lesson on interrogatives. The Cardassian language is exceptionally rich in interrogatives, as we are a curious -- some say prying -- people. It's so important you have a good grasp on which interrogatives to use in which circumstances. It's really quite complex!" She bit into a slice of her melon, and she moaned in pleasure as her blue eyes rolled back in her head. "It's like the flavor explodes in your mouth!"

Deleth was grateful that grammatical rules were the least sexual subject he could think of. He mumbled, "Yes, absolutely," then crammed a bite of melon into his own mouth, pointedly not looking at her face.

Efet gave him a searching look. She'd had the oddest dreams last night, and Deleth was acting so withdrawn and strange. Granted, he was always withdrawn and strange, so she should've been used to it by now. But today it seemed like he was trying harder than ever to avoid talking to her or even meeting her eyes. She half-wondered if he'd also had odd dreams and was a little shaken up by them. It would explain a lot. She had attributed her dream to yesterday's brush with death -- Efet had dreamed she was dangling over the river by her fingernails, until a great embracing light had lifted her up and held her close. She'd woken up feeling safe and loved.

After breakfast, they set off for the wall, with Efet keeping up a lively speech about interrogatives and their use as relative pronouns, while Deleth grunted in response and sometimes repeated after her. Efet felt she was not struggling to keep up as much as she had been. She'd been in the jungle for about two weeks, and she was developing a bit more stamina and balance, clambering over tree roots as they walked more easily. Callouses had developed on her feet, which was much preferable to blisters anyway. She had cut herself another walking stick and was working on vaulting over obstacles and feeling like an adventurer from old stories. After a few hours, Deleth seemed to relax and was looking her in the face again.

As they approached midday, the walk became steeper and hillier, which Deleth had told her about. There was a definite slope out of the river basin and up towards the rock walls. The foliage was no longer as dense, and the muddy ground became more like regular dirt. There were different animals as well; some kind of large crawling iridescent beetle with six legs, and winged creatures who spun nests made of some kind of fiber that hung from the tree branches. They were growing thirstier in the heat, and all they could do was eat watery melons to slake their thirst. Deleth told her he'd never found any water source other than the river.

"Have you found the mouth of the river?" Efet asked him.

Deleth shook his head. "I followed it upstream once, but it becomes rough going as you near the far wall. Very rocky, treacherous landscape. I turned back as I feared I'd be buried by a landslide. I presume the river springs from some underground source."

"Do you think there's a cave system?"

"Maybe, but no way to know if the cave system leads anywhere, or just to dead ends. I'm sure the Klingons thought of that, and sealed off any caves, if there are any."

"And you said the open side of the valley leads to a waterfall?"

"Yes," Deleth assured her. "A giant waterfall, that disappears into a cloud of white water vapor. You can see a lot of jungle land far into the distance. There's no way to climb out, even with equipment, since the fall is so deep. It seems to drop down into the bowels of this planet."

As they broke out of the jungle and stood before the wall, Efet felt as though the hairs on her head were all standing on end. The rock wall, which had loomed in the distance, completely took up what seemed like her entire field of vision. It was so immense, and when she walked up to it, she saw it was almost totally sheer, with very few pits where one might find a foothold. She pressed her fist to the wall, and bowed her head. Right until now, Efet had held out hope that once they were here, she'd think of some way over this wall. That somehow she'd construct a subspace communicator from a few melons and twigs, and they'd get a signal out and -- what? She glanced over at Deleth, who was also staring up at the wall. Surely he wasn't dreaming of contacting the Cardassian Union. She wasn't sure what her people would do with him, but probably nothing good. But what good would it do her to contact the Romulans, even if she could by some miracle get a sigal out? Would _they_ return her to her people, or leave her here, or take her captive? She might take herself from one prison to another.

She put her back to the wall and sank to the ground. "We're trapped, aren't we."

"Yes," said Deleth.

Hot tears sprang to her eyes. "This isn't the end. It can't be the end! We're getting off this rock!"

Deleth regarded her sadly, and Efet fought back the tears. They had to be strong for each other. Unfortunately, the only way out seemed to be going through the Klingons -- which was impossible. Deleth could fight, but she knew for a fact there were at least three guards, and probably more than that. And they had _weapons_. Despite his training, Efet knew she would be useless in such a fight. It was suicide to attack the Klingons, but that was their only practical chance of getting out of this prison. Either they withered away out here, took the fight to the Klingons, or waited for the Klingons to inevitably come to them. She had never been faced with such horrible choices.

As she stood to follow Deleth back into the jungle to return to their only water source, Efet spotted something off in the distance. She shaded her eyes with her hands and asked him, "What are those?" She pointed to the rock cairns that could be seen a little ways to the north of them, jutting out from the grassy landscape.

"Those are piles of rocks," Deleth said in a tone that told her he didn't want to discuss it.

"Those are some kind of deliberate rock structures," Efet told him. "Look at them, they're out in the open, in the grass. Someone constructed those, Deleth. Maybe another alien?" She started to walk towards them, but Deleth snapped at her to come back.

"Leave those alone!"

Efet stopped in her tracks and looked at Deleth. Something occurred to her, a horrible thought that she didn't want to believe. "You built those, didn't you? You know exactly what they are."

"Leave it alone," Deleth said.

She looked back at the rock cairns. There were three of them, built up into mounds, each about two meters long and a meter wide. "Deleth, these are... graves, aren't they? Did you bury someone out here?"


	9. Chapter 9

Deleth's face twisted, and he glowered at her from beneath those heavy brow ridges. The set of his jaw and the angry look in his eyes told Efet everything. She inhaled deeply and let her eyelids fall, opening them again as she breathed out, trying to release the tension from her body.

"You're not going to tell me the truth, are you?"

Deleth didn't answer.

Efet looked back at those rock cairns, then met Deleth's gaze again. He glowered, but she could see the slightest twitch around his mouth, and a tremble in his shoulders. She realized he was fighting to stay angry, not to let his expression slip. Around the edges of his face, she could see something that looked an awful lot like grief. He looked young, and exhausted, and desperately vulnerable. She hesitated for a moment, then approached him, touched him gently on the shoulder and said, "All right. Let's walk back."

He fell into step with her, and they walked downhill back toward the jungle. It was still midday, and the heat was now brutal. Even Efet felt overheated as they retreated into the shade of the dense foliage, and she knew Deleth must be miserable. It would take them hours to make it back to the river to drink, so Efet kept an eye out for melons as they went along in the crushing silence Deleth seemed determined to preserve. She no longer thought he was angry with her; she wasn't sure if he'd ever been angry at all, only desperate to protect those parts of himself he was afraid to show.

Spotting some melons growing on a tree that had almost been crushed by more aggressive vegetation, Efet wasted no time in plucking them. "Deleth, have one of these," she said, running to his side and pressing one into his hand.

"I don't want it."

"It is too hot for that sort of pride," Efet insisted. "Please. You need to drink water, and this is all I have to give you."

Deleth took the melon and sat on the twisted roots of a tree, pressing his back to the trunk. He did not crack open his melon right away; instead, he sat and stared ahead, with eyes that seemed to see nothing. At last, he said, "I have kept all my secrets from you, Efet. I think I'll die with them." He looked at her, the spell he was under seemingly broken. 

Efet knelt next to him, took his melon in her hands, and broke it open for him. "Who am I going to tell your secrets to?" she asked him, even as she gestured to him to take a bite. "To the river? To the trees and bugs and roots?"

Deleth shook his head, but raised a bite to his lips. He didn't say anything more until after he'd swallowed. "It's not that you could tell them to anyone. It's that -- I don't want you to turn from me in disgust if I told you what happened." His head bowed, as though whatever shame he was carrying was too heavy to bear.

"Unless you murdered those people yourself, that won't happen," Efet assured him. She thought for a moment, then said, "Those graves back there... those were the other Romulans, weren't they? I guess there were four of you that were brought to this place?"

Deleth trembled. 

"And you're the last survivor, aren't you?" Efet went on. 

Deleth's eyes shone. 

"Your scar..." Efet remembered her promise and her next words went unsaid. _Somehow that's how you got your scar._ She knew it was true, but she knew he didn't want to tell her. "Deleth, how long have you been here by yourself?"

"Before you came..." he drew a deep breath. "Ten weeks. Give or take a day." He listlessly took another bite of his melon.

Efet sat quietly for some moments, fighting back tears. "You think I'd be disgusted with your secrets, but I've got some of my own." She viciously wiped at her eyes. "I didn't raise a hand to the Klingons when they captured the outpost where I worked. Sian and Makbar died fighting for me, and I was too cowardly to lift a finger to help them, or avenge them... I hid under my desk until the Klingons dragged me out." She felt tears streaking down her cheeks now. "They took Beltas away and probably killed her, and I did nothing to stop them then, either. And Beltas had been kind to me. Maybe I was just glad it was her and not me." She sobbed openly now. "I could've done something! Initiated a self-destruct sequence... fought back... anything! But I was a coward. So that's my secret."

Hot tears fell from her eyes, a waste of water, but after a long moment, Deleth put an arm around her and tucked her against his side. For some reason, that made Efet cry even harder. 

"My comrades died on the wall," Deleth said softly, and Efet struggled to calm down enough to listen to him. "We mounted an escape attempt that failed. That's why I told you there's no way out. I buried them all and I was alone here, until you came."

Sniffling, Efet pulled herself into a sitting position. "That's not --"

"Wait." Deleth held up a hand to tell her to reserve her judgments. "Before you go saying that's not so bad, you need to hear the whole story. We tried climbing out. We fashioned rock climbing equipment out of our belts, clothes, and bits of vines and this and that. We were all tied together -- my commander, Tarak, went first, followed by subcommander Zharal, centurion Velatra, and finally, me. My belt was tied to my arm, right here --" and he indicated the angry scar just above his deltoid muscle. "We made it far above the valley. It took us hours. But our strengths started to fail. Tarak's anchor wasn't set deep enough, and he began to fall, pulling Zharal and Velatra with him. Velatra had caught a tiny ledge with her pick, but Zharal and Tarak were deadweight on her, and if they all went, they would drag me with them and we'd all die." Deleth began to tremble again. Efet found herself rubbing his forearm in an effort to console him. 

"Velatra called to me. She told me to cut them loose. Let them fall. I can still hear the commander and subcommander screaming in fear. Velatra's pick was slipping. My belt was tightening on my arm, so tight it bit into my flesh, and I knew in a few moments -- I don't know how I did it. But my left hand held onto my anchor and I took my knife with my right hand and I cut the belt." He drew a shaky breath. "I let them fall. Tarak and Zharal went first. Then, a second or two after, Velatra, when her pick finally slipped."

Efet sat in stunned silence, her tears and her own grief forgotten.

"I climbed back down. It seemed to take a lifetime. Then I found their bodies, broken by the fall, and I buried them. I was in a kind of daze, maybe even a madness. A thousand times, I wished I had died with them. At least we would've been together. I would not have killed my commanding officers."

His shoulders slumped, as though finally relieved of his burden, and Deleth let his head rest against the tree trunk. Efet reached for him, lightly resting her hand on the back of his hand. Deleth startled a little, looking down at their hands, and then back to her.

"Your officer gave you an order, didn't she? So you were following orders. She must've known there was no way for them to save themselves. That's why she made you cut them loose, so you'd have a chance to live."

Deleth huffed a little, lowering his eyes. "Velatra wasn't my commander. She was my superior officer, yes, but Tarak was the commander and she--"

"You said he was screaming. He couldn't give you an order," Efet insisted. "So Velatra took it on herself. And you've been hating yourself for weeks, because you did what you had to do!"

"You don't understand, you weren't there--"

"No, I wasn't. But I'd be dead a half dozen times over if it weren't for you, and if you'd died that day on that wall, a totally preventable and meaningless death, I'd be dead right now. You followed orders. You saved your own life. That's what I understand."

Deleth thought on this for several long moments. Efet could see him fighting back the urge to tell her she was wrong, but when he spoke, he said, "I don't think you're a coward."

"...What?" Efet was thrown for a loop.

"You called yourself a coward, for not fighting back against the Klingons when they captured you," Deleth said. His fingers were softly caressing hers. "But I don't think you're a coward. You're not a soldier, Efet. You weren't trained to fight to the death, and there was no sense in you throwing away your own life to make some last stand. You've got something waiting for you back home, something to live for. You're afraid, sometimes. But not a coward."

"Oh," whispered Efet. She didn't know what to say. She'd assumed it was such a foregone conclusion that she was the biggest coward in the whole Quadrant, that she was truly staggered that Deleth had thought to challenge her on this.

Deleth very deliberately pulled his hand from hers and stood up. "We should get going," he told her.

He led them back into the interior of the jungle, and as they journeyed, Deleth couldn't help but to steal glances at her from the corner of his eye. He still couldn't believe he'd broken down and told her of what happened to Tarak, Zharal, and Velatra. Their memories had haunted him many nights since he'd been here, and he'd mourned for them, believing he should've died in their steads, or at least joined them in death. But Efet had a point. Their mission had not been to come here and die. His mission, the same as any Romulan in a prison camp, was to survive and return to his duty post. He had a personal mission as well, which was to keep Efet alive and hopefully, someday and somehow, get her out of here as well. 

It had felt good to unburden himself of his secret, and it seemed to do her good, too. Efet was back to trying to vault her way from one tree's root system to another, and getting better and better at it. She was nearly able to keep pace with him now, and every time she went to vault, her little braid flew out behind her. Deleth could almost feel her phantom touch on the back of his hand. He'd gotten intense emotional sensation from her -- mostly concern, and sympathy for his situation, but also a soft, fluttering, excited kind of feeling, that said she'd liked it when he'd held her close and comforted her when she'd wept. Perhaps she had merely enjoyed the physical closeness -- he wasn't sure, but Deleth thought Cardassians were more affectionate than Romulans. But part of him liked to think she was excited that _he_ had reached out to her and pulled her close. If he concentrated, he could almost feel how her fingers had felt...

They reached the river shortly after nightfall. They'd made good time, far better than Deleth had anticipated, and they knelt to quench their thirsts gratefully. This time, Efet made camp, finding a little clearing a ways from the river, building a fire, and cooking their food. She had somehow found ways to combine the edible plants he'd shown her to make much tastier meals than Deleth had ever made for himself -- she'd cut open the tubers and mixed them with a little of the aromatic herb, resulting in something he wolfed down two portions of. They'd banked the fire and were settling down for sleep when the loud buzzing and whirring of the sub-impulse thrusters used in Klingon starships. The foliage rippled above them as the ship passed by.

"What was that?" whispered Efet, picking her head up from where she'd bedded down for the night.

"The Klingons," Deleth told her, leaping to his feet. "That's a shuttle, just like the one that brought you here."

"You think they're bringing more prisoners?"

"Must be," Deleth said, as he began to gather items from their little camp. "Come on! We're going to find a more secure place to stay."


	10. Chapter 10

"Where are we going?" Efet whispered.

Deleth wasn't entirely sure, but he wasn't going to admit it. He berated himself for becoming so complacent; he should have found them a hidey-hole to stay in, not camping out in the open as though they were taking shore leave. "Do you remember the waterfall where we first met?"

"Yes. The one with the little grotto hidden behind it. Is that where we're going?"

It was as good an option as any, Deleth supposed. The waterfall would conceal them from view and drown out any sounds they made. The only problem was they couldn't build a fire there, as the smoke would lead others right to them. "It's not so far from us. Once we reach the river, we'll head upstream -- ow!" He yelped a little as he lost his footing on a root and went to one knee. Smarting more from embarrassment than pain, he rubbed at his kneecap.

Sighing, Efet took the lead. "Let me go in front," she told him. "It's pitch black and my people see better in the dark than yours."

Deleth had to grudgingly concede that was one advantage Cardassians had over Romulans: night vision. Now, their roles were curiously reversed, with Efet boldly and confidently leading him through the tangle of the jungle, while Deleth lightly clutched the edge of her sleeve between his fingers, dependent on her for the first time. Occasionally, a shaft of moonlight would break through the canopy and he'd catch a glimpse of her, her dark hair outlined in the silver light, her long neck sloping down to her shoulders. They heard the river, then soon enough came upon its banks, and Efet led them upstream and they found the little waterfall, pool, and grotto that had set the stage for their first meeting. They crept over the slippery rocks to enter the grotto, and Efet arranged some loose branches at the entrance to hide it from view.

"Deleth," Efet said to him after they'd bedded down. "Who do you think the poor bastards are who've been brought here to join us?"

"I'm not fortunate enough for them to be more Romulans, so my guess is... no one good."

"But if they're prisoners here like us, then we have a common enemy in the Klingons." He could hear the hopefulness in Efet's voice. "What is that human saying, _the enemy of my enemy is my friend_?" 

"You can't possibly hope these strangers will want to be friends with us?"

"Well, you did."

He was thunderstruck by her statement. Efet had never actually said the words before, said that they were... friends. They had been stuck together by chance, bonded by loneliness, and he had spent the last few days criticizing her, yelling at her, rebuffing her overtures of friendship, and even on one or two occasions, outright terrorizing her. That is, when it wasn't late at night when he allowed himself to imagine touching her hands and breasts and other sexual fantasies. Deleth thought of his behavior, and felt great shame swell in him. He would never have called someone who acted as he had a 'friend', but Efet, it seemed, was more forgiving than he would have been in her place.

"Efet..." he said softly, and for a moment he didn't think she could hear him over the rush of the waterfall, until she grunted softly in acknowledgment. "I-I haven't been the kindest friend to you. I would like to do better."

"Mmm?" she made a sleepy noise. "You've saved my life at least twice a day since we met. All things considered, you're probably the best friend I've ever had."

"You must be joking."

"No, not at all. I have some friends back home on Cardassia, girls I grew up with. Even my cousin Daykor. But I can't imagine any of them surviving all this with me, the way you have. When I make it back to them -- and I will make it back, you know I believe it -- I'm going to tell my entire family it was because of you."

Some unknown emotion clenched him by the throat. Deleth didn't feel he deserved any of this consideration. _I saved her life to save myself from loneliness_ , he thought, shattered by the realization that nothing he had ever done had been for unselfish reasons. He had even caressed her fingers, all the while she was ignorant of how sensual such an act was to his people. He had, frankly, taken advantage of her. Part of him wanted to tell her so, but he was afraid she would be furious with him, run away and possibly get herself killed, and he was sure he'd lay down and die if that happened. So instead, he said, "Do you remember when you asked me which Romulan women preferred: ridges or no ridges?"

Efet propped herself up on her elbow, curious at the sudden change of subject matter. "Yes, I do." He had been so flustered over her question that she had tried not to ask any teasing or suggestive questions since, assuming it was something taboo in Romulan culture. For him to bring it up now, days later, was odd, not in the least because she now knew it had been on his mind.

He was laying on his back, very still, his hands folded neatly across his chest. The moonlight projected ripples onto his face from the waterfall. "Uhm, it is very much personal preference for Romulan women. I've heard them discussing it. My sister and her friends, the women in my classes at the academy -- some prefer facial ridges, others do not. Southerners, who do not usually have facial ridges, are considered.... handsomer. Northerners, like myself, we're bigger and stockier and our facial ridges are thought to make us more primal and... some consider that to be sexually appealing. I suppose." He sounded so mortified to be telling her this that Efet couldn't help but crack a smile. It was sort of cute to see Deleth like this, he was nothing like the swaggering and bold Cardassian men she'd dated. If she found out Deleth had ever kissed a girl, she thought she'd fall over from shock.

Efet decided to try her luck. "Oh, then I'm sure the ladies were all over _you_ back home," she said, keeping her tone light and airy. She didn't want him to think she was being sarcastic and get upset.

Even in the darkness, she thought she could see his face flushing. There was definitely a green tinge to his cheeks and ears. "Don't mock me, Efet."

"I assure you, I'm being sincere!" She frowned, worried that he was going to take it the wrong way no matter what. "Listen, on Cardassia men and women love to tease one another. That's how we show our interest. But it's not meant to be cruel or mocking." Really, Efet reasoned, Deleth probably was considered attractive among his own race. He was fantastically well-built, his eyes were dark and expressive, and she liked his facial ridges -- they gave dimension to his features, and she'd never liked the flattened faces of some other alien species. And, of course, there were the ears. What woman could resist those ears?

Deleth was silent for a few moments, then he seemed to blurt out, "That was unkind of me. I don't think much of my -- well, I pushed my own feelings onto you." He rolled over, which was his way of terminating an awkward conversation.

Ah hah. So there it was, his sore spot. Efet swallowed several possible replies, trying to remember that he was _not_ Cardassian, he would take her teasing and flirting the absolute worst way. Really, she felt a little crazy for even wanting to flirt with him. What did she expect to happen? Best case scenario: Deleth taking her in his strong arms, kissing her breathless, ripping her clothes off, laying her down in this sinfully hot sand and ravishing her? _Wow, that actually sounds amazing_ , she thought guiltily. She was laying less than a meter away from the subject of her fantasies that seemed to come directly from the most disreputable kind of holosuites. Efet felt her neck scales heat up.

She wasn't sure when she finally drifted off to sleep, but she was roused from her sleep by a dream so realistic, it really felt like her dream lover was stroking her skin. Blinking her eyes open, Efet had a single moment of pure bliss, lost in the sensation of hands running up and down her spinal scales, before a jolt of shock and adrenaline propelled her fully awake. Even as she jerked in his arms, Deleth woke, his eyes wide with panic and his mouth falling open a little. During the night, she had rolled towards him or he towards her, and Efet had draped herself over him, while his hands had found their way under her undershirt, where they had been stroking and caressing her with wild abandon.

"Ah!" Efet squeaked, and gracefully flopped over.

If she thought Deleth had looked mortified last night, that was nothing compared to now. Green colored his entire face, spreading all the way down his neck. "I-I am so sorry," he babbled, not able to look her in the eye. He sat up, drawing his legs up to his body rather too late to hide his arousal tenting his underclothes. Efet felt so bad for looking, but she couldn't stop herself. "That will never happen again, I swear it!"

He looked like he was ready to withdraw entirely, and Efet found herself saying, "It's all right, really, it was just... you know, we were sleeping next to each other and, uh, things happen." It seemed a little silly to get so flustered over this, when she'd been just as close before when he had saved her life. During the flood, for example. Of course, her life hadn't been in peril just now...

Deleth swallowed. "I'm gonna go bathe in the pool. Excuse me." He stood rather stiffly and walked out of the grotto, deliberately keeping his back to her. Efet blew a wayward strand of hair out of her face. Just when she thought they had reached some sort of equilibrium, they'd gone and made it as awkward as possible in a way only they could.

Deleth returned with wet hair and an armload of vegetables. He gave half to Efet without a word and they sat facing away from each other while eating, each pointedly refusing to talk about this morning. At last, Deleth cleared his throat. "I think we should do some recon and find those newcomers the Klingons dropped off last night. Better we know what we're dealing with now rather than later."

Efet agreed, more to have something to do than because she was eager to go hunting for aliens. They carefully hid their little grotto, and headed out, Deleth keeping them downwind in case the new prisoners had excellent senses of smell. Efet's sensitive hearing picked up the first traces of them; the newcomers were not the quietest. She and Deleth crept along a thick barrier of foliage, trusting the jungle to hide them as they made their way towards the little makeshift camp. The first thing they saw were several humanoid figures milling about in a clearing; Deleth and Efet dropped to their bellies to creep closer and eavesdrop.

They regarded the new prisoners with some trepidation. They counted four of them: all over two meters tall, with tusks and facial ridges and wild hair. They were loud and aggressive, quarreling among themselves, and seemed to be discussing some half-baked plan to ambush their Klingon captors. Deleth looked over at Efet and gave her a barely perceptible nod. They carefully backed off and headed back the way they'd came.

"They look like uglier Klingons," Efet said to Deleth as soon as they were far enough away she was reasonably sure they couldn't overhear her.

"Nausicaans," Deleth told her, leading her a ways upstream, intending to double-back to their grotto to make it that much harder for any of the newcomers to track their movements. "Probably pirates." Four gigantic Nausicaans were about the worst possible option to be trapped here with, especially as they were outnumbered. He was armed only with his knife and Efet with her sharpened walking stick. Right now, they needed to put some distance between them and the Nausicaan prisoners, so he led her up to a bridge over the river Deleth had found weeks ago, but suspected Efet had never seen.

He was proven right by the 'o' shape her lips formed when she saw it. "Wow!" she said, and despite it all, he was pleased to see her so impressed. Long ago, a great tree had collapsed, falling across the river to form a natural bridge from one high bank to another. The branches had mostly snapped and broken off over time, leaving jagged nubs jutting from the mossy trunk, a trunk somewhat less than a meter wide and so well-worn, it was easy to walk across, or at least it would've been, were it not always wet from the river spray. On the other side of the bank lay the remains of the tree's roots, great hardened twisted things that thrust into the air. Deleth helped Efet onto the tree bridge and they began to pick their way across, both acutely aware of the crashing river below them, roiling and leaping. "You don't suppose this thing is likely to snap in half anytime soon?" Efet asked.

Deleth certainly hoped not. He stayed right behind her, in case she slipped on the moss, but Efet seemed to be more surefooted than ever, especially with her walking stick in her hand. The distance from bank to bank was perhaps 12 meters, and they were about halfway across when a voice boomed out.

"Oh, don't run away now!" Deleth almost jumped out of his skin at the sound. He turned to find a Nausicaan standing right where they had just been, ambling up onto the tree bridge as though he had not a care in the world. _Damn!_ Deleth berated himself silently. He couldn't believe they'd been followed and neither had known it. Behind him, he felt Efet touch the crook of his elbow.

"What have we here! A Romulan and a Cardassian walk into a bar -- that sounds like a bad joke!" The Nausicaan bellowed out an ugly laugh.

"Leave us alone!" Deleth snapped at him.

"Oh, I don't think so." The stranger's tone turned ugly. "You," he said to Deleth, pointing at him, "have something I want."

"There is nothing here for you."

"Wrong! Try again!" The Nausicaan took a step towards them, and Deleth eased a step back, feeling Efet step back with him, like a dance. "You have a woman. And I want her." He eyed Efet with obvious evil intent.

Deleth didn't bother to correct him. He could almost feel Efet's anxiety spiking, but he continued to ease them both backward, keeping his eyes fixed on the Nausicaan. Slowly, he reached into the folds of his shirt and withdrew his knife. The Nausicaan looked visibly thrilled at this; he smacked his tusks together as though relishing the fight and the (no doubt) rape he imagined would soon be his. Deleth was no expert on Nausicaans, but he estimated this fellow to be middle-aged or thereabouts; his croaking voice gave it away. He desperately hoped he had the advantage, if not in reach or toughness, in speed and stamina. He did not hope they'd settle this diplomatically.

"I love this part," the Nausicaan went on, as he closed in on them. He was still bare-handed, but Deleth couldn't be sure he didn't have a crude weapon hidden on his own person somewhere. "I really do. Two dominant males contesting for a female. A primordial struggle, seen on thousands of worlds since time began." The river roared beneath them. "See, I never bothered with courting or sweet-talking a woman. I really love the look in their mate's eyes when he realizes he's lost her to me." He advanced another step. "Never taken one from a Romulan before, but there's a first time for ev--"

Deleth charged him, springing into the air and bringing an arm down in a crushing blow. The Nausicaan blocked it, just as Deleth thought he might, but Deleth's other hand swung around and sank his knife into his torso. A boot smashed into his chest and sent Deleth staggering back several steps. Dimly, he was aware of Efet crying out his name.

"Nice try." The Nausicaan brushed his hand over the knife handle, dislodging it as one might a thorn. It fell to the tree trunk at his feet, and he kicked it into the river. "You've never fought one of my kind before. We have chitinous armor over our vital organs -- that little knife won't even slow me down."

Deleth sprang to his feet, swinging a rear kick that could (and had) busted reinforced doors from their hinges. But the Nausicaan sidestepped him, grabbed his leg, and flung him back to the trunk. He stepped on Deleth's neck, chuckling at the enraged choke in his throat and the flailing of his arms. Tears sprang to the corners of Deleth's eyes. He felt sure the Nausicaan was going to throw him into the river, where he'd be swept away, and Efet would be --

The Nausicaan cursed loudly and fell back. Taking advantage of the respite, Deleth rolled to a crouched position. Efet had struck with her sharpened stick, catching the Nausicaan in a soft spot on his throat. Now she defended _him_ , jabbing her stick lighting fast and forcing the Nausicaan back a few steps. Grunting, their attacker peeled his hand away from his throat, looking at the blood staining his fingers. "Pretty nice stick you got there, girly," he told Efet. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had a woman? I'm gonna love--"

"Die and go to hell!" snarled Efet, and her next jab caught him in the forearm. He grabbed for the stick, but she jabbed hard again, sinking the sharpened end through his hand and yanked it back out. The Nausicaan howled in rage.

Deleth knew Efet could only pick him apart for so long. Her stick enabled her to keep him away from her, but sooner or later the Nausicaan would rush her and either overwhelm her or knock them both into the river to drown. More than anything, Deleth needed to avoid a headbutt from that reinforced forehead; that would probably knock him unconscious. Thinking fast, he dug his fingers into the tree trunk and clambered along the side of the trunk, using the broken branch nubs to brace his feet as he made his way around their attacker. He didn't have his knife anymore, but he still had his hands.

He climbed up behind the Nausicaan, who now seemed to be questioning his own wisdom at getting himself into this situation. With the crashing river below, and an enraged enemy blocking either escape path, he was well and truly trapped. Deleth saw him tense his muscles, and knew their attacker was preparing to blitz Efet, willing to take a stab to the throat, jaw or eye to knock her over and make his escape. He pounced, tackling the Nausicaan from behind and grabbing him by the throat. He wrenched away from him with so much power, Deleth swore his shoulder almost popped out of the socket. Deleth tore at his throat, but he couldn't tear through his attacker's natural armor, so settled for grappling with him, using his bodyweight to drag him down. They sank to a heap on the trunk, the Nausicaan reaching around to rake at his eyes and tear at his hair. Efet closed in, swinging around her stick to smash their attacker in the face with the blunt end, then stabbing him through the knee with the sharp end.

The Nausicaan thrashed wildly, fighting for his life now. "Efet, get back!" Deleth cried over the din, and Efet cleared out of the way. Using all his strength, Deleth wrestled the Nausicaan over to the edge and tried to fling him into the river. He caught a vicious blow to the face that stunned him, but he delivered a punch of his own that busted his eye socket. Ordinarily, this wouldn't stop a Nausicaan, but the impact was enough to send him over the edge of the tree bridge, dragging Deleth with him as he went. Deleth was barely holding on with his nails, only one leg still securely on the bridge.

"Deleth!" Efet threw something to him which Deleth realized was that stupid piece of twine she carried everywhere. The Nausicaan was still clawing at him and they were perilously close to both going into the river.

"No, I'll drag you with me!" Deleth called up to her.

"Grab it! I've got it tied to a branch!"

He planted his elbow in the Nausicaan's face and grabbed the twine. A moment later, both he and the Nausicaan went over the edge, the one disappearing into the raging waters, and Deleth being caught and suspended by the twine. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up, with Efet catching him by his collar and tugging him part of the way. Exhausted and beaten, he collapsed on the bridge.

"Deleth, no, don't die on me!" Efet pleaded, and even though Deleth was nowhere near death, he allowed her to hold him close and pepper his brow with kisses. She felt so soft and smelled so good. He wanted to bury his face in her breasts and never leave. That not being practical, he tried to stand, but swayed on his feet, and let Efet half-drag him to the end of the bridge. He was pretty sure he was not only lightheaded from that blow to the face, but also the knowledge of just how close they came to dying back there. Even through his double vision, he saw where Efet had looped the twine around one of those gnarled, broken old branch nubs. He had never felt so grateful in his life. They staggered along the river bank, Efet doing most of the work keeping them upright, and they made it back to their little sanctuary in the grotto under the waterfall. Deleth let himself sink boneless to the sand.

Efet tore a strip from her already ragged shirt to wipe at his face. "You're so bloody, oh!"


	11. Chapter 11

When he woke, for a terrifying moment, Deleth thought the blow to his head had left him blind. All he could see was deepest black, with here and there a trace of a shimmer. He sat up, and realized with great relief that it was merely the darkest part of the night and he had been sleeping on his side facing the slick black walls of the grotto. A hand came up to rest on his shoulder; Deleth startled a little, then rolled over to find Efet laying next to him.

"Come back to sleep," she murmured. Her voice was thick with sleep, and he could just make out the outline of her body.

Obligingly, Deleth lay back down and allowed himself to drift off. Efet's hand slid down his arm to his bicep, which she gave a little squeeze, then she, too, fell back into her dreams.

He groaned and cracked an eye open, noting that it was daylight now. Efet was not beside him. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his shoulder knocked him back down. Deleth groaned again and started the slow process of moving first one foot, then the other, then bending his knees. He flexed his hands, but didn't dare move that shoulder. The blow he'd taken to the side of the head throbbed; he reached up and touched it gently, finding that the dried blood had been wiped away and the gash had been cleaned to whatever extent Efet was capable of in this environment. He would heal quickly, like all those of his kind, but he was not looking forward to fighting off any more Nausicaans.

The shrubbery that blocked the entrance to their grotto shook a little as Efet entered. She gave him a warm smile as she approached, holding some fruit in her hand. "Good to see you're awake again."

His heart swelled at the sight of her. He lifted his good arm to reach for her, and Efet went to hand him some fruit, but instead Deleth caught her wrist and pulled her down to sit beside him on the black sand. She let out a little "uff!" noise as she dropped down beside him.

"I was worried when I woke and found you gone," Deleth told her. 

Efet laughed a little as she put the fruit down next to them. "It's good to know you were thinking of me."

"I'm always thinking of you."

Efet went to laugh again, but saw the intense sincerity in his eyes and stopped herself. He was looking up at her like she was the center of his universe. For those brief moments she thought he might die in that battle with the Nausicaan, Efet had felt like her universe was ending. She still didn't know how she had the strength to bring him back to the safety of their grotto, but she had known she had to do it. He had been willing to fight and die to save her. Swallowing hard, she said, "I had to go fetch some food but I'm back now. You may be interested to know that I heard what sounded like the Klingon hovercraft's engine in the jungle."

"You did?" Deleth tried to sit up and yelped in pain.

She settled him back down into a reclining position. "Yes, I think so. I didn't see them, though, the foliage was too thick. But I don't think any of the other Nausicaans have found us, either."

"If they knew where we were, they'd have come and killed us by now," Deleth said. "They're a violent and vengeful inferior species. The one that followed us yesterday did not tell the others about us, surely for his own evil purposes."

He didn't have to clarify what evil the Nausicaan had intended for her, as they both had a good idea. Efet brushed a hand against Deleth's brow, more to comfort him than to take his temperature; she had no idea what was a fever in a Romulan. She was sure she never wanted to see another Nausicaan again in her life, but it perturbed her a little that Deleth had reverted back to his 'inferior species' rambling. _It must have been programmed into his mind from a young age_ , Efet thought, but then, Cardassian children were also raised on tales of glory and pride probably not all that different from what Romulans were taught. Perhaps, she too had all kinds of thinking programmed into her. She'd never really considered that before she met Deleth and discovered how they both had inaccurate ideas about the other.

Deleth seemed to revel in her touch, and something dawned on Efet: whatever it was between _them_ was beginning to coalesce into a shape that more and more resembled the relationship between a man and a woman. Their dynamic had been so odd at first with the mixed signals and miscommunication, but the shape was becoming clearer, and this morning she woke in his arms again. Efet had slipped from his grasp and he'd made a soft sound of dismay that she'd soothed away with a stroke to the back of his hand. Even as she thought about this, Deleth looked up at her and asked in the softest voice she'd ever heard him use, "C-can I touch your hand?"

She roused herself from her daydreaming and managed a nod. Deleth did not reach for her hand right away. Instead, he touched her elbow, his fingers tracing the outline of the scales there, then slid up the delicate skin on the underside of her forearm, drawing his fingers up as he went until his nails lightly brushed at her wrist. Her breathing sped up and for some reason her heart started pounding. Deleth was still looking into her eyes, holding her gaze so tight she couldn't have broken away even if she'd wanted to. Then his fingers slid into the cup of her palm, then down to caress her littlest finger, back up to the next finger, and so on. He tempered his strength to keep from crushing her.

"Efet..." Deleth managed after a long moment.

"Yes?" Her heart beat a mad tattoo against her chest. 

"This is how my people kiss," Deleth confessed, and he lowered her hand and released it. She blinked at him. He sighed, seeming disappointed in himself. "You didn't know, of course."

She looked down at her fingers, which seemed to tingle. "Have you ever kissed someone like this before?"

Deleth frowned. "Yes," he admitted, and added, "a long time ago. It went nowhere. Now I realize it didn't really mean anything at all." He sighed again. "I've taken advantage of you. I offer my apologies, although I don't think I deserve your forgiveness--"

"Deleth," she interrupted. "Have you kissed anyone the way my people kiss?"

He let his head drop back down to the ground and audibly gulped. He stared at the grotto's ceiling and said, "No, never." She leaned in closer, fascinated by the way his neck flushed. That, at least, was a shared trait of their peoples. He almost seemed to be trembling in anticipation as she drew herself close to him, nuzzling her face to his so her lips brushed against the shell of his ear.

"Do you want to?"

He was definitely trembling now. Efet could feel the heat in her own neck scales, and knew she, too, was blushing furiously. "I--um..."

Efet drew back just a little. "But not with me? Don't be concerned, I'd never steal your first kiss from you."

Deleth turned his head and shot her a look with those dark eyes that beseeched her not to toy with him. Efet smiled at him. His hands were clenching open and closed, as though he was fighting back the impulse to grab her and clutch her to him. She found the coiled tension in him thrilling; she had never seen a man so desperate to touch her, as though she were a physical need like thirst or hunger. _All right_ , Efet told herself. _You're the older and more experienced one! You can do this!_ She steeled herself, knowing that he had never kissed with his lips before and likely had no idea what to do. She brushed her lips against his ear again, hearing and feeling as he drew a great gasp of air. Continuing on her way, letting him adjust to the feeling of her lips, she trailed down to his lobe, then onto the hinge of his jaw, where she found his feverishly hot skin was covered in tiny, invisible hairs that felt velvety.

Although Efet had planned on seducing _him_ , she nearly swooned. This was nothing like kissing a Cardassian man. Deleth was deliciously hot, his skin so impossibly soft and he had a scent reminded her of the human spice cinnamon. Little needy sounds came from his throat, and she felt his body straining upward, trying to connect with her. She braced one hand on his chest even as her lips brushed against his mouth.

She felt him tense, then the seam of his lips opened, and that was it -- Deleth's good hand fisted in her hair, pressing her to him, and he moaned into the kiss. He had no idea what he was doing but she'd anticipated that, and tried to guide him, sliding her tongue against his lower lip before kissing it, then tilting her head to deepen the connection between their mouths. He tried to sit up again to pull her even more against him, but gasped in pain and fell back, breaking away from her. He lay back, panting softly, his lips swollen.

"Ah," Deleth groaned. "I can't believe -- my shoulder--" he sounded agonized, partly from the pain and partly from the frustration of almost getting everything he wanted but not quite.

"It's all right," Efet assured him. "Let yourself heal." She leaned over him, smiling a little as his good arm came up to wrap around her waist and his fingers pushed past the material of her blouse to find a bit of bare skin. He was so tactile; she could get used to this.

He seemed to be trying to will his shoulder to mend itself in moments. "That was incredible," he said. " _You're_ incredible. Efet, I've never felt--"

"You don't have to say anything," Efet assured him. After all, she was the only woman here, so she had no illusions about her default status.

"No," Deleth groaned again. "Let me finish what I wished to say! I loved all of it, I loved kissing you. I need to be around you. The touch of your hands, your lips, the trust you put in me -- I need it. Let me hold you again, kiss you, and I'll make love to you and I swear, _I swear_ , it will be pleasurable for you. I won't stop till I find how to bring you pleasure, and we'll lay so close and our skin will touch and we'll feel one another's--"

"Deleth," whispered Efet, a little overwhelmed. She had heard Romulans were basically more passionate Vulcans, and vaguely something about Vulcans being so wild in their past that they'd nearly driven themselves to extinction. For the first time she saw of this side of him, this passion and need. Her people did not bond so quickly, but Deleth seemed to be consumed with her, body and soul. She stroked the sides of his neck even as he thrashed his head and tried to pull himself back up.

"Please don't shut me out," Deleth begged from between clenched teeth. 

"I would never shut you out. I want you, too," Efet assured him, and that seemed to soothe him a little, as he let his head fall back and take in deep draws of air. She _did_ want him, but she was overwhelmed. Realistically, she had no idea how this would work and hadn't really had a plan past kissing him. Either they would die here in this jungle, or find some way to be rescued by their own people. Her people would never let her take him back with her, and even if they did, what would he do on Cardassia? Very few aliens settled on her world, and her people did not take kindly to the daughters of Cardassia choosing men from other worlds. At primary school there'd only been one set of hybrids, half-Miradorn twin sisters, and their mother was Miradorn. Efet couldn't imagine the notoriously xenophobic and suspicious Romulans would allow Deleth to bring her back with him.

She pressed herself against him, laying her head on his chest and clasping his good hand in hers, interlocking their fingers. Deleth groaned appreciatively. She had acted on a fantasy, Efet realized, but she really did desire him. She wasn't sure how they could make this work, but somehow she knew Deleth was serious about her, she _felt_ it --

A terrible thought occured to her.

"Deleth," Efet said, raising her head. "Are you telepathic?!" Vulcans were telepathic, she was sure of it, so surely Romulans were, too!

Deleth looked up at her with horror. "Do you think I'm controlling your mind?"

The bottom fell out of her stomach, like being on a jumpship just as the Zero G kicked in. "Are you?" she whispered. Was everything she'd done and felt just suggestions from him? Were her thoughts even her own?

"Efet, listen to me now." Deleth's tone was deadly serious. He had a look on his face like a man prepared to fight for his life, and she supposed in a way he was. "My people are not touch telepaths like Vulcans. Well, in very rare cases, there have been Romulans with great talents. But I am not one of them. All I can do is get glimpses of your emotions in their rawest forms."

"Emotions? But can you control them?"

"No!" Deleth's face screwed up in pain and distress. "I swear to you all I can do is feel impressions from you. I cannot influence you." His eyes pleaded with her to believe him, and incredibly, she did. Efet reasoned that if he had the ability to mind control someone by touch, he could've used it on her when they first met to force her to do his bidding, or made the Nausicaan stop fighting them. Or even made the Klingon guards obey him. Efet, like all Cardassian children, had received training in resisting mental assaults, but she'd never had to use any of those techniques. Thinking back, she could identity no presences in her mind that seemed foreign, or any will but her own. She slumped a little in relief.

"I believe you," she said at last. "It's just -- my people have a horror of being mind controlled. You must understand."

"I do," Deleth assured her. "Romulans don't bond like Vulcans. They entrap their mates with a sort of psychic link, and even worse, it's forced on them as children. But my people rejected that oppressive system over two thousand years ago. The thought of never having a private moment to myself is horrible." He reached for her hand, and she let their fingers interlock in that intimate way that made his eyes roll back in his head.

"Well, you're in no shape for romance right now," Efet told him, looking at his shoulder pointedly. "And we both need to eat something." She picked up their forgotten fruit and began peeling it, offering some to Deleth who was ravenous all of a sudden.

They stayed in their grotto the rest of the day, talking and holding one another. When dusk fell, Efet felt it was safe to venture out again to gather more food. Deleth did not want her to go alone, but he was still in no shape to go with her, so she promised she'd be careful and softly kissed his lips. Tip-toeing out, Efet set to gathering some of the scraggly leafy vegetables Deleth had shown her; it didn't taste very good but could be eaten raw, and they didn't dare build a fire right now. She was returning to the grotto when the clouds were lit up by beams of phaser fire, followed by the faint sounds of fighting and yelling far in the distance. Frightened, she almost ran back to the grotto to tell Deleth what she'd seen.

"Phaser fire? You're sure?" Deleth was now sitting up, still favoring the injured shoulder but looking better and better. "That can only mean the Klingons have gone after the Nausicaans in a hunting party."

The thought of anyone, even those Nausicaans, being hunted for sport made her stomach turn. "So the Klingons have killed them all?"

"Only one way to find out, and that's to head towards where you saw the phaser fire and investigate. If they've killed the Nausicaans, they won't bother burying them. The bodies will still be right where they fell."

"I thought Klingons were all about honor," sniffed Efet. "I don't see how hunting down aliens caged in this valley is very honorable. You'd think at least they'd use their bat'leth instead of phasers."

"They did before," said Deleth, and Efet did not want to know the circumstances behind that statement. "It's very strange. Maybe the Nausicaans ambushed them so they resorted to their phasers." He seemed troubled, and when they lay down for sleep he pulled Efet to him and held her protectively, as though he could keep away the horrors just outside their little grotto's entrance.


	12. Chapter 12

Deleth murmured softly as he awoke, the tantalizing touch of lips on his throat drawing him out of his slumber. A shaft of golden light sliced through their cover of greenery; he and Efet were bathed in the most beautiful glow of early morning, and the entire world seemed more delicious than it ever had before.

Efet lay draped over him, her legs tangled with his, and as he woke, she made a little welcoming sound before capturing his lips with her own. Deleth moaned into the kiss. He was enjoying this manner of kissing more every time he tried it, and Efet was skillful, her lips and tongue working together to coax him into a frenzy of need for her. Through their contact, he clearly picked up emotional impressions -- desire, and curiosity, mostly. If Deleth's emotions could have been painted as a maelstrom of colors colliding and bleeding together, dark reds and blacks mixing and separating, then swirling with whites and grays and sending up sparks, Efet's were bright and clear blues and yellows, confident and thrilling, with very little darkness muddying it up. He could not quite believe his luck in having her in his arms, so ready and willing, and he could no longer doubt that she truly desired him.

He plunged his hands into her hair, then clasped her tightly and rolled them so that Efet lay beneath him. She smiled up at him. "Well, good morning to you."

Propping himself up on one elbow so he did not crush her, Deleth brushed his lips against hers, then lower to her chin. "Are you hungry?" he asked her, prepared to back off if she gave him a sign.

"Not for food," Efet told him, and drew him closer.

Deleth hesitated only a moment, then let his hand stray down to the edge of her blouse. Efet arched her back, urging him on, as he slid the warm flat of his hand up her sternum, then cupped a breast. She was wearing a sort of brassiere, and he didn't know how to remove it, so he just caressed her through the fabric. Efet pressed a hand against his chest, moving him back far enough that she could sit up and shed her blouse, and then the brassiere under it. She was now nude except for her underwear. Her eyes were hooded and glimmered as she looked at him; she was enjoying this.

He swallowed as he reached out again, this time stroking the scaled ridges on the sides of her neck, which caused an intense reaction in Efet. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned so loudly that he startled a bit. Thankfully, the waterfall drowned out their sounds. Deleth was relieved to find her neck scales were not at all cold or slimy, and then felt ashamed of himself for even thinking of something like that to begin with. Her scales were hot and cartilaginous to the touch, and flushed as he stroked her. _Evidently this is an erogenous zone in Cardassians_ , he thought, right before pulling her to him and kissing her just under her chin. Efet writhed against him, her scales darkening, as she moaned and clasped her hands around his shoulders. Deleth found her breasts again, his thumbs sweeping over her nipples. Her scales formed a pattern outlining her breasts, terminating in a little vee at her navel. 

Efet took one of his hands and guided him between her legs. At this point, Deleth was so aroused that he could no longer summon any objection to any of this. When he felt a little rush of wetness against his fingers, he pulled Efet into his lap, crushingly close, thrusting up against her until she, the more rational of the two, pulled a little away to shed her underwear.

Likewise, Deleth made to shed the last of his garments, his head cooling just enough for him to pause for a moment, struck by a flood of self-doubt. Would she find his body alien and unappealing? Perhaps she would be repulsed by his genitals? Efet noticed his hesitation, and placed a hand on his arm. "It's all right," she told him. "I'd like to see you." She batted her eyes playfully. "I saw you that first time in the nude, if you will remember."

She _had_ , but that hadn't been a sexual encounter. For some reason, that seemed to make a lot of difference. Deleth steeled himself and removed his clothing, moving to cover her quickly. His cock brushed against her thigh, which felt so good that he almost embarrassed himself then and there. Summoning all the willpower he possessed, Deleth lay her down and concentrating on lavishing her body with kisses, focusing on her so that his own ardor would cool a little, finding his way from her breasts to the little dip of her navel. He had never done anything like this before, but he'd seen some of the more... _erotic_ holos popular among young Romulan men, and had some idea of what to do. He desperately hoped Efet was built enough like a Romulan woman that he wouldn't make a fool out of himself. So far she was still enthusiastically urging him on, her hips bucking up towards him, her hands twisting in his hair.

Deleth parted her legs and allowed himself a moment to examine her most intimate place. She was scaleless here, but a small tuft of black hair topped her pubis, just above the lips that hid her delicate sex organs from view. The lips parted, and he found a little button, in the same inverted teardrop shape as her _chufa_ , but much smaller, only the size of his smallest fingertip. It was swollen and had a soft blue color. He nosed in just a little, feeling the trembling of her legs as she anticipated his next moves. His friends back in the academy who'd had more success with women had bragged of how their lovers tasted, sweet and wet like tropical fruits, but Deleth licked her and found this was like putting his tongue to a battery -- metallic and electrifying. Her legs clamped around his head, and the sensation of her soft thighs, the taste of her on his tongue, and her musky scent, was driving him mad. Deleth was sure he could spend the rest of his life between her legs and die a happy man.

He pried her legs far enough apart to try a finger in her opening, which made Efet writhe and throw her head back, biting out words between her lips that she had never, ever taught him in her language lessons. Much to his relief, Deleth was sure they were physically compatible. At this point, he would've found _some_ way to make love to her, but finding he could probably enter her was the best possible outcome. He continued his ministrations with his mouth, eager to pleasure her that way as he was far gone enough to know that, once he entered her, he wouldn't last long. 

Efet's breasts heaved, and she cried out her pleasure before falling into a heap in the sand. "Deleth," she whispered, reaching for him. He forgot his self-consciousness as he climbed over her again, pressing their mouths together. She wiggled a hand between their bodies and Deleth almost yelped when she touched his cockhead. "You're so... silky!" Efet said, letting her fingers caress him. He felt his face burning, but eagerly followed when she guided him back to that opening between her legs. Efet pushed her heels into the sand, pushing herself just a little to help him find his way inside. Once he was seated within her, Deleth could no longer hold himself back. His instincts took over, driving him to find a punishing rhythm, his hands gripping her hips and holding her still as he took her. He did not remember to kiss in her people's fashion; he was too far gone. Efet instead licked and kissed his shoulder, her hands holding on as best she could. His release overcame him; it felt as though it were torn from him. He spasmed, gripped her tighter, hard enough to leave bruises, and growled as he poured his seed into her.

They lay there connected for some minutes, as he pulsed within her. Efet stroked his head, purring softly to him. She felt safe and warm and, perhaps for the first time since the Klingons took her at the little outpost, she forgot to be afraid. The world was contained within the two of them, and no one could intrude on them. 

He disengaged from her and lay beside her, nuzzling her ear. His cock, now softening, lay back against his leg, a little of his seed still to be seen upon its head, the seed pearlescent ivory in color and more viscous than that of Cardassians. She felt sore between her legs but it was a good kind of sore, the kind that reminded one of the healthy experience of sex, with just a hint of the aftershock of her orgasm.

They dozed uncommonly late, each one reluctant to return to the unpleasant realties waiting for them outside the grotto. Out there, all that awaited them were their Klingon captors and unfriendly Nausicaans, a thick humid jungle, and sheer rock walls that offered no escape. In here, they had a private little world for just the two of them.

At last, hunger drove them up and made them dress. "We should still investigate that phaser fire from yesterday," Deleth told her.

Efet shook the sand from her blouse and slipped it back on. "Do you think the Klingons killed the Nausicaans?"

"Most probably. But it wouldn't be wise to let our guard down, there were still three Nausicaans left and no guarantee the Klingons killed all of them."

They cautiously peered out of their little grotto, and seeing nothing amiss, quickly slipped into the sheltering jungle, Efet leading the way towards where she'd heard the phaser fire, which led them upriver. "This is the way to the far wall," Deleth said, seeming a little concerned. "The terrain gets very rocky as you go uphill, and there's little foliage to cover you. I can't imagine the Nausicaans made a camp out in the open. The Klingons must have driven them there during the hunt."

Deleth hadn't lied about the rough terrain. As they went uphill out of the river basin, more of those great boulders pierced the landscape, and little rocks littered underfoot, making for slow going. As usual, Deleth was more surefooted, with Efet more than once beginning to slide down a slope of tiny rocks as she followed behind him and having to be rescued.

They took a break to eat berries under the shade of a tenacious tree sprouting from the unwelcoming terrain. They ate quietly, both lost in thought.

Efet looked at him over her food and wondered if Deleth would ever address this morning. What _were_ they, anyway? Lovers? Was this a one-time thing? She had felt intensely connected to him, but she wasn't naive enough to think this alien -- who had very different mores than her own -- was in love with her after one bout of love making. She told herself that if they made it out of here alive, she'd probably never see him again, so it was best not to get too attached. He was sure to break her heart.

"Stop thinking so loudly," Deleth grumbled at her.

She let out a little shocked burst of laughter. "What?!"

"You look like you've twisted yourself up into knots with regret over this morning." Deleth looked down at his feet. She was reminded again of his self-consciousness, and wondered who had gotten to him and made him feel that no one would ever desire him. 

Efet shook her head. "It's not like that. I'm not regretting being with you. It's just... the future seems so overwhelming right now."

He was looking at her now, with those soft dark eyes and the tenderest expression she had ever seen from him. Her heart fluttered a little. Perhaps only loneliness and necessity had brought them together, but Deleth had the look of a man who was consumed with passion. He stood and sat next to her, drawing her close to kiss her lips for a moment, then drew back just far enough to look her in the eyes.

"We'll face the future together," he told her.

Efet couldn't help the half smile that formed on her face.

They resumed their trek to the far wall, making good time despite the difficult terrain, and it was Efet who first spotted a black mark marring a boulder, mute evidence of a phaser blast that had not struck its intended target. They knew for sure they were close to the fight, and crept along as silent as could be, before coming across an incredible sight.

A great flood of rubble lay before them, at the foot of what had once been part of the rock wall. Some of the scraggly little trees had been burnt and burst in half from phaser fire; this area had seen the brunt of the fighting. It wasn't until they ventured closer that they saw a foot sticking out of the rubble, wearing a Klingon boot.

"This is no earthquake," Deleth whispered to her. "This was a landslide." He knelt by the boot, digging his hands into the rubble and digging a little to expose the Klingon's broken body, still clutching a cracked and useless phaser. "I'd say he fired at the wrong spot on the wall and triggered a landslide, burying himself here."

Efet covered her mouth with her hand in horror. "That's the Klingon who gave me my sack," she said, sinking to her knees.

"I think if we dig, we might find more of the guards," Deleth went on.

"And the three Nausicaans?"

"I'd say they're all buried under here as well, but I know I'm not that fortunate." Deleth dug around, throwing handful of rubble behind him in cloudy clods as he went. Efet felt too sick to her stomach to assist him. The sight of the only Klingon who had shown her any kindness had shaken her badly. After some minutes, Deleth called her over to see what he had found: a dead Nausicaan.

They began to understand what had happened. The Klingons had pursued the Nausicaans into this area, chasing them to a dead end with their backs to a wall. Something had gone wrong; a Klingon was disarmed of his bat'leth, perhaps, causing him to draw his phaser. Then a poorly aimed phaser burst had brought a landslide down onto them, crushing them and burying them in these tombs. Shaken by what they'd seen, Deleth and Efet retreated back downhill, back to the cover of the jungle, to recover and make sense of what was next.

"How many Klingons usually guard this place?" Efet asked him.

"I've always counted five," Deleth told her. "They come and go, probably as their orders change, but the number has always been consistent. They have a small guard's post near the landing strip, to the west of our grotto. When we first arrived here, my comrades and I considered besieging their compound, but the risk was too great as they outnumbered us and had weapons."

"If all the Klingons died in that landslide," Efet chose her words carefully, "then who's to stop us from entering that compound?"

"I'm sure its locked and the computer --"

"I'm an _engineer_ ," Efet reminded him. "If I couldn't break weak Klingon programming, I would never have earned my degree. If no one's guarding that compound, then I can get us in. You said they have a hovercraft, right?"

"Yes," Deleth said, his voice betraying his excitement. "A hovercraft they use to summit the walls and communicate using a relay of some kind!"

"We could do it!" Efet told him. "We could get inside that compound, take that hovercraft, and I could send a distress signal to my people to come rescue us!"

"Your people?" Deleth's face changed. His brow drew downwards as his lips fell into a frown. "We will contact the Romulan Star Empire and they will come for us."


	13. Chapter 13

"You can't be serious!"

Deleth shot her a glare over his shoulder. "I am deadly serious."

"Listen, we can't afford to be choosy about who rescues us! I'll broadcast a message to both our peoples, and we'll go with whoever gets to us first."

"If you send a message via regular subspace channels, all you'll do is bring more Klingons down on our heads. They'll reign fire from orbit and kill us both, along with everything else alive in this valley -- down to the bacteria. Your people will be intercepted as soon as they enter Klingon space, and killed. _I_ have access codes to encrypted Romulan subspace channels, not to mention my people have cloaking technology and far more experience with stealth operations into Klingon territory!"

Efet was so frustrated she wanted to cry. Her face was hot and just looking at Deleth made her feel awful. The cold hard truth was, Efet didn't trust the Romulans. She didn't trust them to come for them, and she didn't trust them to return her to her people. For all she knew, she'd end up being dissected in some Tal Shiar secret prison somewhere. Deleth was so cold, she found it hard to believe he really care about her concerns, which he deflected offhandedly, as though she were a petulant child. She could hardly believe this was the man with whom she had blissfully shared her body just hours before. For the first time, she was seeing the sharklike Romulan soldier in him, and she didn't like it.

"So, I should just trust you that your people will return me safely to Cardassia?" Efet snapped, letting her bitterness and disappointment taint her voice. "The Romulan Star Navy will just ferry me back to my homeworld, like its an all-expenses-paid pleasure cruise!"

Deleth sighed deeply. "And suppose they did not?" he asked, turning to her and grasping her by the shoulders. Efet stuck out her chin and looked up at him defiantly. "If they did not return you to Cardassia, would it be so terrible to stay with me?"

Efet's jaw dropped. That was absolutely the last thing she'd expected him to say. "I --I --!"

"I don't want you to go back to your people!" Deleth told her forcefully. "I want you to stay with me! Why is that so terrible? You could live with me on my homeworld, where you'd have access to advantages you'd never dreamed of. You wouldn't waste away fixing ODN relays on some backwater outpost."

"Deleth," Efet managed, "you hardly know me." 

"How can you say that!" Deleth gave her a look so heartbroken, he seemed to be in physical pain. Efet knew at once that she had made some major miscalculation when it came to his feelings for her. The agony in his eyes cut her up inside into ribbons. "I was willing to give my life for you. To share my life with you. And you say I hardly know you!"

"I misspoke," Efet whispered, but he went on before she could speak further.

"You have made your feelings clear. If remaining with me is so distasteful, then I will see to it that you are returned safely to Cardassian space, one way or another." He released her and stalked on ahead, his shoulders hunched.

"Deleth!" She ran to catch up with him.

"We have work to do," he gritted out. "We still have to take the Klingon guard compound. Let us agree to put our... personal feelings aside for the time being."

Tears glistened in her eyes. Efet wasn't sure how things had gone so wrong so quickly, but she felt sure they could work this out. She knew Deleth had taken what she said as a rejection, and was trying to push her away to protect himself. She wasn't sure if she could forsake her own people to follow him into an alien and hostile environment, but she knew she cared deeply for him and it was something she was willing to consider. It was staggering to realize he had actually dreamed up some kind of future for the two of them, something beyond a mere sexual encounter. A lot of men had fantasies about alien women, but few seriously considered a life with one.

Deleth absolutely did not wish to talk right now, so Efet settled for following along behind him for the time being. They were heading towards the landing strip where she'd been left on that first day, then veered slightly north-west to a small hollow in the thick jungle. Deleth signaled to her to stay quiet as they crept forward. The compound was small -- Deleth had been right, surely no more than five or six Klingons could be stationed here at the same time. It was a squat one-story building, built up against a large boulder that erupted out of the landscape. Efet could see weapons mounted on the roof, and more at the barred windows, but there was no sign of life. If they were lucky, the Klingon guards had all been buried alive in the landslide, leaving no one to man the station. They could break in, commandeer some subspace communications equipment and the hovercraft, and be on their way within ten to twelve hours. Efet nearly shook with excitement. She had never been so close to escape, she could almost taste it!

Deleth waved at her, then held up a pebble and tossed it in the direction of the compound. It bounced harmlessly off a glittering force field. That wasn't entirely unexpected; the guards would've been foolish to leave their compound unguarded, with doors unlocked to any and all prisoners in the vicinity.

Efet crawled over to him to whisper into his ear, "If I can find the emitters, I can bring down the force field. It should only take a few minutes." One of her classes at the Ministry of Science had been in disabling and enabling various force fields and containment fields, including those used by the major powers in the Quadrant: Cardassian, Federation, Klingon, and Romulan. She sketched out a small image in the mud of what the emitter would look like. Deleth nodded, then made a half-circle motion with his finger, which Efet took to mean that they would each search for an emitter in the area ringing the compound and meet in the middle. She went left and he went right, staying low to the ground like voles.

She had made her way nearly to the massive boulder when she spotted it, cleverly disguised and hidden in a nook in the stone. Almost crowing with excitement, Efet found a small branch and pried the box open to find a tangle of components -- typical sloppy Klingon work -- and she had it rewired in under a minute. When the force field went down, she couldn't contain herself -- she actually jumped up and down to celebrate.

Something hard pressed against her spine. "Move, and I'll kill you," a voice growled.

Efet nearly fainted. She didn't dare look over her shoulder to see who it was. Instead, her eyes darted about, hoping to spot Deleth and warn him away before he got caught, too. How could she have been so careless? She had been so close! 

The door to the compound opened, and a female Klingon appeared. She was holding a phaser rifle and was watching the jungle, no doubt ready for an attack. Efet's captor pushed her forward, and putting her hands up in surrender, she meekly complied.

When they entered the compound, Efet was tossed to the floor, falling onto her hands and knees. Behind her, the door was slammed and locked. Blood pounded in her ears; she felt faint. How could she have let them take her unawares? Where was Deleth? Had they hurt them? She dared a glance up through the fall of her hair covering her face. A male Klingon, a big study fellow who wore fur and one of those sashes, stood guarding the door.

The female Klingon yanked her to her feet. "Where is he?!"

"Who?" Efet played dumb.

"The Romulan!"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about." So they hadn't captured or killed Deleth after all. Relief flooded her body.

The female Klingon laughed in her face. She had a fierce sort of beauty, with that spray of eyebrows and her jagged teeth. "This _petaQ_ thinks us to be fools!" She got right up in Efet's face, nose to nose. "Do not lie to me again. You _reek_ of Romulan."

The male Klingon roared in frustration as he checked a computer console. "The force fields are still offline!" he snarled, then tore a piece of casing from the console and flung it down the hall.

"Silence!" the female Klingon told him. Turning to Efet, she said, "It was you and your companion who tampered with our emitters, fix them!" She held a knife to Efet's throat.

Efet squeezed her eyes shut and tried to accept death. Summoning all her courage for one last lie, she said, "It was De-- the Romulan who sabotaged the emitters. I can't fix them. I was trying to break one when you caught me."

The female Klingon's eyes narrowed. "That cannot be," she muttered. Turning to her companion, she barked at him, "Where was this one taken?"

"How am I to know? It was before my time here." The male Klingon glowered at them both.

"You fool! If we knew what her profession was, we'd know if she had the knowledge to dismantle our emitters or not." She grabbed Efet and began marching her down the hall.

The Klingon compound was poorly lit, and dank, and reeked of food, leather, oil, and something that was presumably Klingon body sweat. It reminded Efet of the time she'd spent on the Klingon ship when she was being brought here. They passed a room that seemed to be the kitchen -- Efet heard animals squealing, and Klingons liked their food fresh, sometimes still wiggling. There did not seem to be a brig here, as the female Klingon marched her into what was clearly quarters. It had two racks of bunks, and a room off to the side that presumably held a shower and a toilet. Actually, given the smell, maybe not a shower, Efet thought as she wrinkled her nose. The female Klingon shoved her towards a bed, and Efet sat, still holding up her hands in surrender. The Klingon female stormed over to a cabinet and swore loudly as she began digging through it.

"What are you doing?!" the male Klingon demanded to know as he followed them in. "Kill her and be done with it!"

"Silence, you pig! She's our only leverage against the Romulan." The female Klingon swore again as she flung what appeared to be medical supplies on the floor. "These are all expired! Useless!" Slamming the cabinet shut, she walked back toward Efet. "I was trying to find a regenerator and an abortifacient, but the idiots who commanded this hellhole let everything expire and moulder. They have failed us all!"

The male Klingon seemed taken aback. "Why bother?"

"She's been raped, you _baktag_!"

Efet cowered before them, trying to play the part of victim as best she could. The female Klingon seemed to pity her, and Efet would rather not reveal anything of the true nature of her relationship with Deleth if she could help it. The Klingons quarreled for several minutes, until the female finally ordered the male to try to fix the emitters and sent him stomping off. That being done, she turned back to Efet and put her hands on her hips.

"Do I need to hurt you, or will you talk willingly?"

"I'll talk," Efet said quickly.

"Will the Romulan come for you?"

"I don't know," Efet replied.

"I think he will." The female Klingon frowned. "Why were the two of you lurking out there?"

"We were trying to break in, we thought it was empty," Efet admitted. "We found the landslide and thought maybe the guards were all dead."

"No, not all!" The female Klingon blew an irritated snort through her nose. Efet wondered who she was and how she'd ended up here. She must've arrived after Efet, as she had no idea who Efet was or that she'd been an engineer. She seemed like she was in command, but Efet was pretty sure that Klingon women weren't usually given command positions. Perhaps she merely outranked the sole surviving male. He seemed to chafe under the female Klingon's insults and commands, something Efet filed away in her head as potentially useful. Right now, although she was in great danger, she had several advantages. They didn't know Efet's capabilities, or what her relationship with Deleth was really like, and most importantly, Deleth was still at large. Efet had no doubt he'd come to rescue her, and it was up to her to make his attempt successful.


	14. Chapter 14

The female Klingon cursed loudly at her computer and then slammed her fists on it so hard, sparks flew from a crack in the corner of the console.

Efet couldn't read Klingon, but she had a suspicion that the computer was giving an error message. Her captor seemed to be trying to access the computer files, but Efet guessed she was locked out. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. No matter how sloppy Klingons might be, Efet knew they must keep some kind of files on all their prisoners, including her. As neither Klingon guard seemed to know anything about her, the simplest explanation was they couldn't access any file on her or Deleth.

Deciding to try her luck, Efet cleared her throat and said, "Pardon me."

The female Klingon snarled something at her, but the dark circles around her eyes gave away her tiredness and her snarl came across as somewhat perfunctory. Efet was no longer as intimidated as she had been an hour ago.

"I'm very hungry. Do you have any rations I could eat -- preferably something not still wiggling?"

The female Klingon eyed her up and down, then stomped over to an alcove. To Efet's surprise, she barked an order and a cup of something steamy materialized. A replicator! Efet didn't know the Klingons had a replicator. 

The female Klingon handed her the cup, then fetched a small container for herself and sat on the bunk across from Efet. She popped the top off her container, revealing a tangle of gagh, which she devoured with gusto. The sight turned Efet's stomach but she was hungry, so she put it out of her mind and tried a sip of the soup or stew -- what it was exactly, she didn't know, but it had some vegetables floating in a sort of broth with a few chunks of meat. It tasted undercooked, but knowing Klingon preferences, Efet figured she should be grateful it wasn't raw.

"Do you know how to operate computers?" the female Klingon demanded to know through a mouthful of gagh.

The truth was, if she had access to a translator PADD, Efet could probably have hacked the Klingon computer in a few hours. But she wasn't going to give herself away and give the Klingons any kind of advantage. "No," she lied. "Before I was imprisoned here, I was a geologist." That had been her mother's profession, one Efet felt she could fake convincingly. 

"Bah!" The female Klingon didn't bother hiding her disappointment. "The fools who imprisoned you here are without honor! Where is the glory in defeating one as weak as you in the hunt?"

Efet felt a little insulted, but still there was an undercurrent of pity in the female Klingon's tone, so she went with it. "I wondered that myself for many days. I still don't know why my people weren't allowed to ransom me."

The female Klingon through her head back and laughed at her. "Ransom! You think Cardassians would bother to ransom one as lowly as you?" Her body shook with the force of her laughter. "Your people are fortunate that Gowron didn't rain fire from orbit and scour your entire planetary system clean of their kind! You have deluded yourself, girl. The Cardassians are not putting up ransoms for geologists."

Efet cringed. She had assumed that her people had inquired after her, made offers for her safe return -- but what if the female Klingon was right? What if they had forsaken her? A ball of despair formed in her chest, squeezing tightly. She shook her head a little, clearing the thoughts. She mustn't let this woman play with her mind, make her doubt herself or her people. Deciding to redirect the conversation, Efet tried, "Were you a warrior in the invasion fleet, then?"

"No," the female Klingon's mirth faded and her eyes went dark and troubled. "No, I was a healer before I was exiled to this hellhole."

A healer! Efet now knew why this woman's first instinct had been to try to give her medical care for the 'rape' she assumed Efet had suffered. Now that she thought on it, of course this woman assumed she'd been raped -- consensual sex with a Romulan was probably nigh-unimaginable to a female Klingon. She dearly would like to know why her captor had been exiled here, but it didn't really matter and more questions might make her angry or suspicious. Efet assumed it was due to some kind of inscrutably tribal Klingon politics. She was rather relieved that the female Klingon at least hadn't been slaughtering Efet's people personally during the invasion.

The door flew open with a bang and the male Klingon entered, grabbing Efet by the arm and yanking her to her feet. Her half-eaten blow of stew fell to the floor and shattered.

"What is the meaning of this?!" The female Klingon actually hurled her container of gagh at the male, who swatted it aside and thrust a finger in her face.

"The Romulan has been trying to tamper with the weapons mounted on the roof. We should kill his female and put her head on a stick! That will drive him into the open for a fight!"

"You fool!" the female Klingon said even as the male began to drag Efet back down the hallway, her feet slipping out from under her in the splattered soup. "Release her at once! I am--"

"I am taking command!" The male Klingon slammed his fist to his chest. "You are no warrior. Unlike you, I am not content to let the Romulan slit my throat in the dark of the night, he will face me and die in battle." Efet begged the female Klingon for help with her eyes as the male Klingon continued to drag her away.

"I said release her!" The female Klingon drew a phaser and pointed it at the male.

"You dare! For this _taHqeq_ , you would threaten me?" The male Klingon drew a wicked looking bladed knife, dragged Efet up in front of him like a shield, and wedged the blade under her chin. Cold fear washed over her as Efet felt a dribble of blood run down her neck. She desperately didn't want to die like this.

The female Klingon fired off a phaser shot but missed, and the console slightly to the left of Efet and the male Klingon exploded in sparks and sizzling pieces of electronics. The lights dimmed, then came back online dimmer than before. The male Klingon threw Efet at the female Klingon, knocking her off balance, then sprang onto them both. Efet scrambled to get out of the way as the two grappled on the floor of the narrow hallway. She crawled towards the door, taking the opportunity, no matter how slight, to escape back to the jungle and Deleth.

Behind her, she heard a strangled cry. A hand grabbed her by the boot and dragged her back, her hands grabbing desperately for purchase. The male Klingon hauled her back to her feet, again placing the knife to her throat. The blade was now bloody, and when she glanced down, Efet saw that the female Klingon lay there with a massive open wound in her chest, from which blood bubbled out. She was still trying to drag herself upright. A shriek escaped Efet before she could smother it.

"A better death than she deserves," the male Klingon said coldly.

He kicked open the door and they stepped into the blinding sunlight. "Romulan! I have your woman! Show yourself or she dies -- now!" 

Silently, Efet pleaded with Deleth not to approach and get himself killed trying to save her. At least, if Deleth survived, he could get word to her family and let them know what happened to her.

Movement in the foliage. The male Klingon's cruel face twisted in glee. "Yes, show yourself!"

Deleth stepped from the cover of the jungle. He held his hands up in front of him, fingers spread wide, to show he had no weapons.

"No," whispered Efet in despair.

"Take the blade from her throat," Deleth told the Klingon. "And you can have me."

Chuckling, the Klingon lowered his knife, but kept his punishing grip on Efet. She couldn't take her eyes off Deleth, but he was watching the Klingon's every move. He edged a little closer, and she could see him working out his angle of attack. If she could see it -- the Klingon could, as well.

Deleth's eyes flitted downwards, for just a fraction of a second, to the ground between the male Klingon's feet. Efet saw it, but didn't have time to wonder why, before the male Klingon bellowed in surprise.

" _Baktag_!" gasped out the female Klingon, from where she'd dragged herself down the hallway to grab the male Klingon by the back of his sash. Thrown off balance for just a moment, he flailed. Efet saw Deleth surge forward, covering the ground between them, and then the female Klingon cry out as the male kicked at her. She had a split second to react.

She pushed her hips back into the male Klingon's leg, grabbed his arm and tried a throw Deleth had shown her. She had not nearly the bodily strength to fight an enraged Klingon, nor the fighting skills, nor even the nerve. But gravity was good to her. The male Klingon, now completely unbalanced, slammed into the ground and lost his grip on his knife.

Deleth was on him in a heartbeat. They collided with just a grunt -- Deleth's face flushed green with the strain of grappling with the male Klingon. Shaking, Efet scrambled for the knife. Behind her, the female Klingon slumped and went still.

Grabbing the knife, Efet desperately tried to remember where a Klingon's weak spots were. Didn't they have several backup organs? She had no time to waste, as the male Klingon had Deleth on the ground and he was smashing Deleth's head into the dirt. She leaped onto his back, straddled his shoulders, took a handful of hair, and drew the blade across his throat.

Deleth yelped as blood splattered onto his face. The Klingon tried to turn on Efet, but she tossed the knife aside rather than let him take it from her. He swung at her, but Efet rolled out of the way. Deleth was back in the fight, throwing the male Klingon to the ground and raining blows on him. Stumbling over the the female Klingon blocking the doorway, Efet made for the phaser laying on the floor.

"Deleth, duck!" she said as she stepped back into the sunlight. Obligingly, he obeyed her. Not knowing which setting was which, she turned on the phaser, aimed it straight at the bloody Klingon, and fired. He disintegrated.

Staring in shock at the spot where the Klingon had been just moments before, Deleth turned to her. His shirt was nearly torn off, he was covered in the Klingon's reddish blood, and one of his eyes was almost swollen shut. Efet wanted to cry at the sight of him. She wanted to hold him forever and never let go. She made it a few steps to him, fell to her knees, and collapsed into his arms. "I thought I was going to lose you," she wept.

"Never, never," he promised, pressing her close and stroking her hair.

The female Klingon was dead. Efet looked sorrowfully on her. She had tried to care for Efet, in her own way, and she sorry she had died on this wretched prison world, but at least she had died fighting, as befitted a Klingon. They dragged the body out of the doorway and into the second bunk room. Neither one really knew what a Klingon's death rituals were like, so they opted to leave her body alone.

"I think by all rights, this belongs to you," Deleth told her as he handed over the Klingon's bloody knife.

"What would I want that for?" Efet shrank away from it.

"This is a d'k tahg, a ceremonial knife. Taking one of these in combat with a Klingon warrior is no easy feat." Deleth smiled at her, and his dark eyes were warm and fond.

She delicately pinched the handle between her forefinger and thumb. "If you insist..."

Once inside, they took a few minutes to lock down the compound and tend to their wounds. In the bunk room, Deleth found some garments, the cleanest of which they tore into strips for bandages. Their clothes were almost completely wrecked, so they dressed themselves in whatever would fit. Deleth found a plain black undershirt, which he donned, and Efet found what appeared to be the female Klingon's clothing. She was tall for a Cardassian, and the female Klingon had been short for a Klingon, so she made it work. When she was finished, she wore a segmented leather skirt and a sort of armored bustier that, to Efet's amusement, revealed a great deal of cleavage. "How do I look?" she asked, turning in a circle for him.

"You look like a warrior goddess," Deleth told her approvingly.

She stifled a giggle. Then, she swallowed and said, "Deleth, I-- I've been thinking --"

He drew himself up a little straighter. "Yes?" He couldn't hide the hopefulness in his voice.

"For a moment out there, I thought you were going to die trying to save me. I desperately wanted you to live. I desperately want you." Her blue eyes pierced him to his core, and Deleth, despite all his bruises and aches and pains, felt nothing but pure joy at her words, to hear her acknowledging her feelings for him. He had cursed himself over and over in the jungle, for letting her get captured, for putting her in harm's way again and again. And above all, for selfishly demanding so much of her without giving in return. If Efet wanted to return to her people, he decided he'd let her go if it meant knowing she was safe. He could live on as long as he knew she was alive out there somewhere. 

"I don't know for sure if I can live among your people." Efet was shaking a little. "But maybe that is something I can think about while we wait for our rescue."

"That you are even considering it is good to hear," Deleth told her. "And maybe more than I deserve." He dearly wanted to hold her again, to use other methods to convince her to stay with him, but right now they had other tasks to complete. Efet was horrified when she inspected the busted console in the hallway, where one Klingon had fired at the other. "This is the main power array!" she cried. "This compound is running on backup power!"

"How long will the power last?"

"I have to find a translator program--"

"I can read Klingon well enough," Deleth assured her. She managed to access one of the computer terminals, and he read the report. "Ten hours at most."

"We could shut down the power to conserve it," Efet suggested.

"If we do that, we won't have force fields."

"Who's going to break in?"

"... Fair enough." Deleth tried to get the computer to give him a map of the compound. "There must be a hangar with the hovercraft in it. Here!" He tapped his finger on the screen excitedly.

"Let's go," Efet said. "I don't care how tired I am, I'll have a subspace message encoded and we'll send it this evening. We're getting out of here!"

Accessing the hangar proved more difficult. Just accessing the computer wasn't enough; it required a thumbprint code. "I'll be right back," Deleth told Efet grimly. He returned carrying a severed thumb.

"Ugh!" Efet recoiled.

"The female Klingon won't need it anymore," he told her. He pressed the thumb to the panel, and the doors opened. They stepped into the hangar... and stood shock still in disbelief.

"This is outrageous," Efet said.

"It's empty." Deleth couldn't believe his eyes. Aside from a few spare parts and tools, there was nothing in the hangar. No hovercraft whatsoever. Their whole plan had hinged on getting over the wall with the Klingon hovercraft!


	15. Chapter 15

"The hovercraft must be buried in that rock slide, along with the other Klingons," Efet said, falling to her knees in despair. She couldn't believe they'd come so far, accomplished so much, only to be stopped now!

"We could dig it out," Deleth suggested, gathering her into his arms and holding her close.

"We'd need heavy equipment to move that much debris, and the hovercraft is surely nothing but junk now," Efet said. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tightly. "I just don't see any way out! We needed that hovercraft to get over the rock walls to transmit a message..." Her eyes went wide and she leaned back a bit to look into Deleth's eyes. "Deleth! The replicator!"

His brow furrowed. "A replicator?" Then she remembered he hadn't actually seen it, so she led him into the barracks, where the remains of Efet's soup and the female Klingon's _gagh_ still stained the floor. There, in the alcove, sat the replicator.

"I wonder if they have any Romulan dishes programmed into it," Deleth said, then said something in thickly-accented Klingon. A moment later, a plate with some kind of mollusk dish materialized before them. Deleth took a bite and scowled. "Ugh. I should have known better than to try a Klingon's idea of Romulan cuisine."

Efet was tearing the place apart looking for tools. "You might as well finish whatever it is on that plate," she told him, brandishing a sprocket-shaped tool. "I'm about to make some modifications to that replicator!"

"How so?"

"Replicators are, in effect, just a variation on transporter technology," Efet explained. "All we need is a little creative engineering..."

Deleth looked more than a bit concerned. "You're not going to try to transport out of here?!" He didn't need to point out that neither of them could fold up small enough to fit inside the replicator, much less carry any subspace transmitter equipment with them.

"Not us, the transmitters! I'll program them to broadcast a rescue message, then we'll beam them a couple kilometers into the air, high enough to get a signal over those rock walls." Laying on her back, she wiggled herself under the replicator's alcove and began yanking out panels. "Deleth, I need you to fetch me some of those force field emitters from outside. I'm going to need their components. Oh! And any other tools you find around here, all right?"

Efet worked herself into a mess slaving over her project. Deleth squatted next to her; Efet would put out her hand and say, "Decoupler", and he'd place the requested tool into her hand, or go hunt for it or other components. Once she was satisfied her modified replicator would work, the arduous task began of programming a rescue message into the Klingon subspace transmitters. Efet wanted to make several, which they would beam at different heights to increase their chances of one or more signals making it out. Deleth's familiarity with Klingon was essential here, as he did most of the programming while Efet helped where she could. Once they had three transmitters programmed, there was nothing to do but try to beam them up. Deleth had originally thought they might beam them to the surface of the rock walls, but as Efet pointed out, they did not have precise coordinates nor did they even know how tall the rock walls were; they could easily beam the transmitters _inside_ solid rock, destroying them and any chance they had for escape. Instead, they beamed them upwards, one a half kilometer into the air, one a full kilometer up, and the last, a kilometer and a half upwards -- they would have only seconds to broadcast their message before they plummeted to their inevitable destruction, but perhaps that would be enough.

It would have to be enough, both Deleth and Efet knew. If this failed, they would surely die here, when more Klingons arrived and discovered what had happened. _At least we'll die together_ , Deleth reasoned. A cold sort of comfort, but it was all they had.

Once it was done, Efet brushed her hands clean and sighed. "I suppose that's all we can do. While we still have some power left, care to join me for a shower?"

The Klingons used actual water showers in their compound; over the course of their captivities both Deleth and Efet had grown accustomed to bathing without sonic showers, so this was no longer the novelty it might otherwise have been, but they found the soapy hot water to be downright decadent after their privations. "Oh, you have a bruise," Efet murmured, kissing him gently on the temple where an angry green splotch had formed.

Deleth nuzzled her, then mock gasped and said, "You have a bruise as well!" Then lowered his head to place a kiss on her breast.

Playfully ruffling his hair, Efet said, "Come, let's try out one of those beds!"

They awoke the next morning, stretching and yawning, to a darkened compound. The backup power had run out. "So much for any more hot water," muttered Deleth. That was it, then; either their plan to send a message out had worked, or they were just killing time until the end. Efet rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling, her expression unreadable. Deleth toyed with a strand of her hair and then tried, "My love, I need to tell you something."

Efet hummed softly.

"I need to tell you my true name."

She opened her eyes and gave him a very confused look. "Your name _isn't_ Deleth?"

"It is, but I also have a true name. My heart's name, given only to the one who has my heart." She had never seen his face so unguarded, so vulnerable, and so hopeful. This was evidently a matter of utmost importance to him. Sitting up, Efet caressed his face with the back of her hand.

"But I don't have a true name to give back to you."

"I know," Deleth assured her. "I always thought it was sort of a silly custom, a bit of romantic folly. I imagined I'd give my true name to my bride as a matter of course, before our wedding. Just a bit of pomp and tradition. But giving it to you... it is truly like I am giving you my heart." He tenderly kissed her lips. "I know now why we keep it so secret. My true name is Dohya."

"Dohya." She tried it out on her tongue. "I like it. Do I call you Dohya now?"

"Never in front of others, only when we are alone."

Efet glanced around the empty barracks and giggled a little. "I think we're alone now. So... I love you, Dohya."

"I love you, Efet." And he held her close.

That evening they climbed up onto the compound's roof to stargaze. They told each other of the names of constellations in their own languages and made up names for the ones they knew nothing about -- "Andorian's Antennae", "Klingon's Breakfast", and the like. Gazing at the endlessly black sky with its pinpricks of light and swirls of faraway galaxies, Efet lay her head in Deleth's lap and said, "You know what I'll miss if we make it out of here? Our little grotto with the black sand."

Deleth smiled. "We had some good moments there. I'll miss it as well."

Efet made to doze off in his lap, but a blue-ish haze surrounded them, and her stomach jumped as it did every time she transported, and they rematerialized on a transporter pad of an unfamiliar ship. Cursing, she leapt to her feet, Deleth not far behind her.

" _Jolan tru_ ," a stern-looking older Romulan told them. He was flanked by heavily-armed guards, each of whom looked ready and willing to vaporize them both at the slightest provocation. It took everything Efet had not to hide behind Deleth and cower. 

"Commander Tomalak!" Deleth greeted the older man with a salute. This seemed to satisfy the Romulans, as one approached with a large, square tricorder and scanned them both, probably for injuries. Efet was a little overwhelmed by all the starring Romulans. She felt quite outlandish in her Klingon garb with her armored bustier and short skirt. She glanced at Deleth and decided to take her cues from him. He was standing and patiently enduring the scans, his hands clasped behind his back.

The commander -- Tomalak -- seemed to size her up, then turned to Deleth. "We detected no other Romulan lifesigns on the surface. I presume your comrades did not survive?"

"Commander Tarak, subcommander Zharal, and centurion Velatra were all killed while trying to summit the rock walls," Deleth informed him. He stood very straight and his voice was formal but not cloying or submissive, more the tone one might use with a trusted mentor. Tomalak's heavy brow gave him an intimidating air. He did not look like a man to be trifled with under any circumstances. Efet had to fight to keep from startling when he turned to speak to her.

"And your name and rank?" The commander demanded.

Efet blinked rapidly. "I am Efet Erem, an engineer with the Cardassian Union. I have no military rank. I was assigned to an outpost on the Cardassian frontier when I was captured."

Tomalak looked at one of his subordinates, who quickly began typing something into a computer; Efet was not sure, but she suspected they were running her credentials. Although Deleth did not look concerned, she had a sudden fear that Tomalak would have her blown out an airlock. Really, why would he bother with her? She was an alien, and less than nothing to him. All she could hope was that Deleth could intercede on her behalf.

Tomalak gave Deleth a barely perceptible nod of the head, and Deleth went to follow after him. He paused, and turned to Efet, saying quickly, "Do not be worried. I'll return momentarily. Just cooperate, all right?" before walking quickly after the commander.

In the hallway, Tomalak waited till the doors were closed before addressing him. "Nephew, we had given you up for dead. Our mourning tattoos faded weeks ago. I do not know how to break this news to your mother."

"Uncle, let me speak to her. I am gratified you came for us."

"'Us'? Who is that alien woman?" Tomalak fixed him with a steely stare. 

"Her name is Efet, and she saved my life many times. She is the entire reason we were even rescued." Deleth met his uncle's stare and straightened himself as much as possible. "I have given her my true name."

Tomalak's face betrayed no expression, but his pupils dilated dangerously. "I'll have to have those scans redone. You've suffered brain damage during your time in that prison."

"I love her and I intend to marry her. As the wife of a Romulan citizen, she will also automatically gain citizenship."

"Your children would be half-breeds." A trace of distaste crept into Tomalak's usually neutral tone. Deleth knew exactly what he was thinking; not so long ago, the thought of bringing an outsider into his family would've been unthinkable to him as well.

"And yet half-breed Romulans still serve the state as loyally and ably as any others. Proconsul Sela, for one, and her mother was a human and an enemy of our people. Efet is neither," Deleth pointed out. 

"Nephew, if you marry that alien woman, it will end your career. Not even your mother's connections or your father's good name could salvage it. You will end up some second-rate bureaucrat in that backwater colony world of yours."

"I have thought of that, Uncle. I know many will say it is unwise. But the men of our family have not always loved wisely, have we?"

Tomalak exhaled deeply. "No, I suppose we have not. If she is lying about her identity, if she has any connections to the Obsidian Order, then I will be forced to take the proper precautions. You must accept that."

"I am confident she is not lying."

"Very well. She will be confined to your quarters for the duration of our journey. You may join me on the bridge tomorrow for First Shift. I'll have someone assign you to quarters, but in the meantime, I'll be directing the exhumation of your comrades' bodies. Go now." With that, Tomalak dismissed him and then departed for the bridge. Deleth felt a little weak in the knees -- not precisely from fear, for all that his uncle was an important man, he had no real fear that Tomalak would hurt him in any way. He was, after all, the son of Tomalak's war hero brother. No, he felt more relief, for having stood up for Efet and not wavering in his devotion to her. For the first time, he felt really worthy of her love. Deleth wanted to give her the very best life possible, one she would never regret building with him.

He returned to the transporter room to fetch Efet. She fell gratefully into his arms. "I can't believe it," she whispered to him in Cardassian. "We're really here. We really made it!"

"We did," he whispered back to her. "You and I did it together."

"Such an unbecoming display," a voice interrupted them. "I suppose as an alien she'll have to be given some leeway until she learns proper behavior." Deleth turned and suppressed a groan. The entire reason he had turned down a position on his uncle's warbird a year ago was standing in the doorway, hand on her hip. _Narshara_. His old flame from his academy days, a crackshot with a disruptor and the security chief of this ship.

" _Jolan tru_ , Narshara," Deleth said as amiably as he could, given the circumstances. "To what do we owe the honor?"

"I've been sent to escort you to your quarters," Narshara informed them. "It seems your little bride-to-be's background check came out clean." She and Efet eyed one another. Much to Deleth's relief, Efet did not try to engage Narshara in dialogue on the walk to their quarters, keeping tight to Deleth's side and looking about curiously. She'd never been on a Romulan warbird before, this must be all new and exciting to her. "You already know she's been confined to your quarters, be sure to keep her there, as any unauthorized access to the ship will be regarded as sabotage," Narshara warned them as she opened the door to their spacious but spartan quarters. 

Efet seemed so grateful to have a sonic shower, Deleth very much doubted she'd leave that long enough to try to wander around the ship. "I'll see to it," he told Narshara.

Narshara pursed her lips. "She's a striking woman, Deleth," she told him. He could hardly have been more astonished had she smacked him in the face. "Beautiful, in her own way. I hope she makes you happy."

"I will," Efet said in reply, and Deleth had the fun of seeing Narshara jump a little at the revelation that Efet understood Romulan. She recovered quickly, stammered out a farewell, and stalked off down the corridor in a rather stiff-legged manner. Efet watched her go, then said, "She didn't realize I spoke Romulan, did she? I get the impression there was some history between you two."

"Ancient history," Deleth promised her, pulling her into their quarters and locking the door. "Ancient, ancient history..."

Efet woke from her deep sleep to find Deleth kissing her goodbye as he left for his shift on the bridge. She sat up and asked him, "Is there any way I can make a subspace call to Cardassia? I need to let my family know I'm alive."

"I'm sure it can be arranged," Deleth assured her as he finished putting on his brand new, very starched, uniform. "I'll get permission from my uncle and then send you a code to a subspace channel." True to his word, he called her shortly after breakfast with a code, and she settled down to make the most difficult, thrilling, and strange call of her entire life. When the channel stabilized on her viewscreen and she saw the face of her mother, Karinka, Efet shouted, "Mother, it's me! I'm alive!"

Karinka Erem took one look at her and fainted dead away. "Mother!" Efet cried in dismay.

Her father, Eriskot Erem, came running into her mother's study at the commotion, saw his daughter's face on the viewscreen, and burst into tears. "It can't be you!" he wept. "You're dead! You died weeks ago!"

"Papa, it's me! I swear it's me!"

Her father frantically revived her mother, who sat up, realized this wasn't a dream, and promptly burst into tears as well. For some minutes there was nothing but blubbering on either end of the transmission. All of Efet's stored up emotions came out in a flood. She was her parents' only child; their whole lives and all their hopes had been placed on her. While she yearned to hold them in her arms, just seeing them was enough to reduce her to a weeping wreck. At last, her mother (always the most forthright and level-headed member of the family) got herself together and asked, "Darling, where are you? You must come home at once!"

"Mother, I, err..." Efet wasn't sure how much she was allowed to tell them, but 'not much' seemed like a safe bet. She decided to keep her situation as vague as possible. "I'm on a Romulan ship leaving Klingon space as we speak."

"A Romulan ship!" If she had said she was riding on the back of a galactic turtle, her father could hardly have been more surprised. 

"Darling, are you being held captive?" Her mother's eyes widened with concern.

"No, no--" Efet tried to explain. "One of them is in love with me--"

Her mother gasped in horror. "Has he taken you for his concubine? Darling, you must send coordinates as soon as possible so we can arrange a rescue mission--"

"Mother, I'm not a concubine!" Efet wanted to laugh despite it all. "He wants to marry me."

Her father and mother looked at each other, perplexed. "And you wish to stay with him?" her mother hazarded a guess.

"Yes, Mother! I mean -- I love him, too! I mean -- it's complicated! It's a long story. But he's so good to me, he really is." Efet beseeched them to understand. This was truly a wild ride of emotions she was putting them through, between finding out she was still alive and that she was in love with an alien, and she did not envy them their situation. There was nothing in the standard Cardassian wisdom about parenting that addressed this situation.

"Darling, as long as you're happy..." her father tried hesitantly, obviously trying to be happy for her despite his own reservations. Oh, her dear father. Efet was sure no one in all the universe had a father as supportive as hers. 

"If anything goes wrong, and I do mean anything, you must contact us immediately," her mother made her swear. Efet swore to allay their fears, then pressed them for news of the war. The Klingons had devastated Cardassia, and millions were dead, injured, missing in action, or homeless. Her cousin Daykor was off serving in the military. Efet had been declared dead in absentia, along with the others on her little outpost. By the time they finished their discussion, Efet was emotionally wrung out. She couldn't cry anymore, but nor could she simply relax or revel in her newfound love. The universe was still deeply troubling and the future was uncertain. She had Deleth to face it with her; that much at least she could take heart in.

Deleth came to join her for lunch, and she told him all about her talk with her family. "If I marry you, could you arrange for my parents to come to the wedding?" Efet asked him, hand-feeding him a slice of fruit.

"My uncle has some contacts in the government, it could possibly be arranged," Deleth told her, nibbling at her fingertips. "Does that mean you'll marry me?"

"I'm warming up to the idea," Efet laughed, holding him close.


End file.
